


For Us Two

by aliceecrivain



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Childhood Friends, Denial of Feelings, Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mutual Pining, Very hand-wavy fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-13 17:30:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 43,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11764857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliceecrivain/pseuds/aliceecrivain
Summary: Erik is five years old the first time he meets Charles in the forest outside his new home and quickly discovers the other boy is more than he appears. Despite being accidental, the event defines the course of his life in ways he never could have expected.The two boys grow up together, mutually braving the ups and downs of adolescence, and, over time, become inextricably attached. Initially intimidated by the limits the attachment puts on him, Erik yearns to break free in spite of his own feelings, but learns with time that the connection between them is not something he can live without.





	1. Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first time posting for this fandom and I'm very Nervous, but I wrote this and I had wanted to share it anyway. Because of that, however, you'll probably have to excuse any mischaracterization or other issues.
> 
> As mentioned in the tags, the fantasy elements in this are really, really hand-wavy. Trust me, it's better to not overthink them. They were more for fun/thematic than meant to be well-integrated, high-fantasy. Disclaimers out of the way, I hope you enjoy!

_I celebrate myself,_  
_And what I assume you shall assume,_  
_For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you._

Walt Whitman, “Leaves of Grass”

 

-5-

Erik was five years old the first time he met Charles.

It was completely on accident. His family had just moved from Germany out into the English countryside because, he’d later understand, the property was cheap and the work was plentiful. Erik didn’t really mind at all at the time. He had some “friends” back in Germany, but in the callous way of a child who doesn’t quite understand how to become truly attached to anyone beyond their parent, he didn’t miss them much when he left.

Their new house was smaller but their yard was enormous. There was plenty of open space for him to run and play and drive his mother crazy, trying to keep track of him. They’d lived in the suburb of a city back in Germany so this was a learning curve for all of them, even his father who’d grown up in a family who had always owned and worked the land. Erik loved their new home, mostly because there were an endless amount of places to explore. There were also an awful lot more chores all of a sudden which he railed against doing constantly. The first couple weeks he managed to weasel out of most of them because his parents didn’t yet understand how much work it would really be to keep the place running which left him with a lot of free time.

Their house was one of a few farmhouses clustered together at the end of a long dirt road which would take one back to civilization and to the nearest town where groceries could be bought. All along the road and surrounding the outer edge of the properties was an enormous forest. The green tops of the trees stretched out like an endless sea and the trunks stood together, sturdy and looming like soldiers. Erik’s father had told him there was a stream somewhere within the woods as well, but it wasn’t audible from the outskirts.

That was why Erik had wanted to go in the first place, to find the river. He knew he wasn’t really supposed to go out too far, that he was meant to stay within earshot of the house if his mother called him back, but he overlooked that, too set on completing his quest to care about those kinds of things. It wasn’t too difficult. One day, when his parents were busy, he walked out along to the edge of their driveway and ducked into the forest, setting off on his way before they could notice he’d even left.

The trees were much taller once he got up closer to them, but he found he didn’t mind the shady quiet of the forest. He was small enough that getting around through the tangled underbrush wasn’t too difficult and he could climb over any logs that were in his way easily enough. Sunlight drifted down through the upper canopy as well, so he wasn’t completely shrouded in darkness. He decided that he liked the forest and continued on at a steady clip, feeling like he was a true adventurer.

He listened for the river as he walked along, but spent more of his time looking at the birds and bugs he found and kicking along rocks. It was pure luck that he ended up stumbling across the water anyway. Erik didn’t know how long it had been since he started off, but it seemed like a while. He was glad then, to have found what he’d been looking for. He followed the sound of it directly and ended up stepping out of the forest into a nice grassy clearing that led right up to the its bank.

It was a nice river, clear with a calm current. He wasn’t worried about falling in at all. The clearing was a good one as well. There was still some shade from the trees, and it was completely secluded. The bank of the river rode up against the trees again some yards away on either side of it. Overall, Erik felt rather pleased with himself for accomplishing his task and for finding the spot. He thought that this spot could belong just to him. He wouldn’t tell his parents about it, or anyone else.

It was an unwelcome surprise then when there was a rustling in the bushes nearby. At first Erik thought it might be an animal, but he was mistaken. Stumbling out of the trees instead was another boy, probably about the same age as him. He seemed dazed by the sun. Erik sized him up, wondering if he’d have to fight for ownership over this place. The boy was smaller and paler, with brown hair and big eyes and some freckles. Not too intimidating.

The boy finally oriented himself and looked over at Erik. He seemed as surprised to find someone else around as Erik had been, but he didn’t look annoyed or angry. Instead he smiled. “Hello!” (He had that same silly accent a lot of people around there seemed to have, Erik noticed.)

Erik just blinked, unsure what to make of him. The other boy approached him immediately, apparently not worried that Erik might pose some danger to him. Erik’s parents had always told him to be wary of strangers, so it was odd to him. He stayed where he was, rooted to the ground even when the boy got closer.

“Do you live here?” the boy asked, still smiling at him for some reason.

Erik eyed him suspiciously. “Why do you want to know?”

That threw the boy off finally. His face fell a little, but he recovered quickly. He did stop short, leaving some space between the two of them. “I just hadn’t seen you before.” He pulled at the edges of his shorts. His clothes were weird too. Erik hadn’t noticed before. His shorts were brown and made out of some material Erik didn’t recognize. His shirt was white and thin, and he didn’t have any shoes on. Erik wondered if he lived down at one of the other houses near them.

“Do _you_ live here?” Erik asked, echoing him.

The boy perked back up. “Yes, I do. I heard something out here and came to see what it was. I’ve never seen anyone else out here before.”

So he was one of their neighbors. “Which house do you live in?” There was a blue one and a white one other than theirs.

The boy screwed his face up, seeming confused. “House?”

The response baffled Erik as well. “Yes, house. My family lives in the yellow one. We came here from our old house far away.”

The boy was still frowning. Erik didn’t understand why what he was saying didn’t make sense to the boy. “You said you live here.”

“I do,” the boy insisted.

“Over there?” Erik pointed across the river.

The boy nodded a little. “But over here too.” He pointed back toward the way Erik had come.

Erik was starting to get frustrated. “How can you live over there and over here?”

The boy took a step back from him, his eyes getting wider. “Because the forest is over there and over here.”

Erik’s eyebrows pulled together and he frowned. “You live in the forest?”

Slowly, the boy nodded. He seemed nervous now.

Erik took a second to parse that information. He wondered if there was a house out in the woods or if the boy was out on his own somehow. He thought it wouldn’t be so bad to live in the forest, so maybe that made sense. At the moment, he nodded. “Where’s your mom and dad?”

“Around,” the boy said vaguely. “I finished my lessons for today so they let me go off on my own. I can’t quite tell where they are all the time yet, but I’m learning.”

Erik frowned again. The longer he talked to him the more he didn’t think this kid knew what he was talking about.

Erik wasn’t the most imaginative child. He was more down-to-earth than many of the other children had been. He’d never had an imaginary friend, and he wasn’t quite as enamored with fairytales. He preferred dinosaurs or things that had been real at some point. That was most likely why he didn’t connect the dots sooner.

“You don’t live in the forest?” the boy asked.

Erik shook his head.

Realization of some sort washed over his face. “You’re…a human.”

Erik had never heard anyone point that out except in movies before because everyone was human. There was no need for it. Right? “Yes. Aren’t you?”

The boy just looked at him, didn’t nod to confirm it. Erik’s confusion only grew. He didn’t know what to do now. Surely the boy was trying to trick him.

“You are,” Erik claimed. “You’re just trying to lie to me.”

“No!” the boy burst out, desperate to defend himself. “I’m not lying, I swear.”

“What are you then?” Erik demanded, determined to sort this out once and for all. “If you’re not human.”

The boy pressed his lips together and seemed to be thinking about it which Erik found awfully suspicious. “I don’t know what you would call us. Mum says humans have lots of different names for us.”

“Like what?” Erik pressed on, regardless.

“Faeries,” the boy suggested. “Nymphs. Forest spirits.” He shrugged. “I can’t remember them all.”

Erik squinted at him again. He certainly looked like a normal boy. There was nothing about him that Erik thought was too different from himself, no pointy ears or wings or horns. But here he was out in the middle of the forest, and Erik didn’t see why he would be lying. “Can you prove it?”

The boy laughed. “You still don’t believe me?” Erik shook his head and the boy seemed to pout. “Maybe. It’s hard. I’m not good at it yet. Can you at least tell me your name first?”

Erik supposed that was fair. “Erik. Erik Lehnsherr.” He stuck his hand out because his mother had told him that was the polite thing to do.

“Erik,” the boy repeated, rolling the word over his tongue. “I’m Charles.” He stepped forward and shook Erik’s hand. Charles’s hand was soft and warm, a little sweaty from the heat of the day. That was a pretty normal name for a forest person, Erik thought. “It’s nice to meet you,” Charles continued. “I’ve never met a human before. I’ve seen some, but always from far away. My parents won’t let me get too close.” He sounded disappointed about it. “There’s not that many kids around either. I get awfully bored all on my own out here.”

“Forest people don’t have kids?” Erik asked, genuinely curious, but Charles laughed at him.

“Some of them do,” Charles finally replied after he caught his breath. “But not that many. I’m the youngest right now.”

Erik couldn’t help but feel bad for Charles, all alone out in the woods with only adults to keep him company. He was kind of annoying and he talked too much, but still. No one deserved that. He probably had a lot of chores to do if he was by himself.

“It’s not that bad,” Charles said, even though Erik hadn’t said anything out loud. “I’m mostly learning right now. I’ll have a lot more to do when I’m older I guess.” He blinked at Erik when Erik stared at him afterward. He seemed to understand what had happened a few seconds later. “Oh! Sorry, I guess I did it without meaning to. Sometimes I can’t help it.” He flushed and looked down at his feet.

Erik still didn’t completely grasp what had happened. “You could hear what I was thinking?”

Charles glanced up at him sheepishly. “Yes. I can only do it sometimes. I can’t control it at all, but I think someday I’ll be able to.”

“That’s amazing,” Erik said without thinking. He couldn’t help but be impressed even if his opinion of Charles thus far had been somewhat lukewarm. “It’s like you have superpowers. Can everyone like you do it?”

Charles looked back up at him fully, smiling at the praise. “Only a few of us can. My mum says that I’ll be able to control it when I’m older, but right now it just sort of happens. I’ll be thinking when suddenly—“ He tapped at his temple. “—someone else will be in here.” His grin widened. “It drives everyone crazy because they can’t keep anything from me.”

Erik had about a million questions. His earlier suspicion was more or less forgotten, set to the side due to the impact of this new discovery. “Isn’t it weird? For that to happen?”

“Sometimes,” Charles admitted. “But it’s okay. I’m used to it. Does that mean you believe me now?” He looked incredibly hopeful. Erik didn’t think he’d ever met someone with so many expressions in his life.

Erik shrugged. “I guess.” The worst thing that could happen if Charles was somehow lying was he’d get laughed at and Erik thought it’d be easy enough to shove Charles into the river as payback if it came to that.

“I’m not lying!” Charles insisted, apparently reading his mind again. “I wouldn’t care if you pushed me in anyway; I like swimming in the river. You’re not very nice.”

Erik scowled, hurt by the accusation. No one had ever said something like that to him so directly before. “Why should I be nice to you? I don’t know you.”

Charles’s hurt showed on his face like everything else and he shied away from Erik a little. “I thought we were friends now.”

Erik didn’t know if he really wanted to be friends with Charles quite yet. He was okay, Erik thought, but he thought it might be tiring to spend a lot of time with him. “I don’t know yet. You can’t be friends with someone that quickly.”

“Why not?”

Erik thought about telling Charles that he wasn’t sure if he liked him yet, but decided against it. He didn’t want to see that silly sad expression on his face again. “I like to be alone usually.” It was a comment he’d heard his mother make before about him. It was true: other kids got on his nerves after a while most of the time. Moving out here so far away from everything didn’t bother him in part because of that.

“Why? Being alone isn’t any fun. I’m alone all the time and I hate it.” Charles was making the sad face anyway.

“Why?” Erik echoed. “You can do whatever you want. You can go wherever you want.”

“I guess, but it’d be nice to have someone to play with sometimes,” Charles said and Erik supposed he had a point. “I could show you around the forest. I know it really well already. There’s a big tree that fell over across the river and bugs ate out the middle of it so it’s hollow now and you can climb in it. And we could swim in the river. I know good trees to climb too.”

All of that sounded good to Erik who did still like the forest, even if it was apparently inhabited by forest people. It wasn’t like Charles was _that_ bad. He at least knew some interesting things. It’d be easier to explore the forest with someone who knew where everything was. So slowly he nodded. “Okay. I guess we could play together sometimes.” Not all the time, but every once in a while Erik thought he’d like to come back.

Charles was smiling again and he moved so he was quite close to Erik. “Really? Can we be friends then?”

Erik didn’t see why that was so important to Charles, but he guessed it didn’t really matter if he wanted to call it that. “I guess.”

Charles cheered and bounded forward to hug him which was so shocking to Erik that he froze completely and didn’t push Charles off. He did stand stiff as a board throughout it, but Charles didn’t seem to notice, nor did he seem to think he’d done something strange. “I’ve never had a friend before,” Charles said as if that explained everything. “Unless you count the adults but I don’t.”

Erik shook himself, decided to ignore the hug for the time being. He noticed how late it was getting suddenly, knew that he probably needed to head back so his mom wouldn’t get too mad at him. She was probably already not going to be happy. He’d stayed out longer than he’d meant to talking with Charles. “I have to go home now,” Erik said.

Charles looked disappointed, but he nodded. “Do you want me to walk you back? I can get you there really fast. You live down by that dirt road, right?”

Erik didn’t want to seem like he needed help—he was sure he could find his way back perfectly fine on his own—but it would be nice to get back quickly, so he nodded and Charles started off into the forest, gesturing for Erik to follow him.

The clearing really wasn’t far from the road at all if you walked in a straight line. Charles certainly walked through the forest like he knew it. He didn’t stumble once and he always seemed to know where he was going even when everything looked the same to Erik. It was impressive to Erik, made him like Charles a little more in spite of himself. They were back close to his house in no time.

“You live there?” Charles asked, getting up on his tiptoes and poking his head just a little bit out of the woods to try and get a look. He acted like there was an invisible wall between the forest and the road. Erik stepped over it to show him there wasn’t anything wrong with it, but Charles stayed firmly where he was so Erik gave up on him.

“Yes.”

“I like your house,” Charles said. He still said “house” like it was a foreign word. “It’s the same color as some of the flowers I see in the forest.” It was such a strange thing to say that Erik laughed at him for it. Charles smiled nervously—it seemed to be his default and most common expression. “What?”

“See you later,” Erik said instead of telling him. He made to set out for home but Charles called after him.

“Wait! When will you come back?”

Erik didn’t really know when he’d be able to and he said as much. “I wasn’t really supposed to be out here. I might get in trouble for it.”

“Why not?” Charles seemed offended. “It’s perfectly safe.”

“Maybe for a forest person.”

Charles stuck his tongue out at him. Erik laughed again and Charles did too.

“Well, don’t never come back. I want to show you that log before it falls apart,” Charles said, stepping back into the woods fully, disappearing among the trees. “Bye, Erik.”

“Bye.” Erik watched him go for a couple seconds longer before he took off toward his house as quickly as he could. When he got close he could hear his mother yelling for him and he braced himself to be scolded.

Still, he was in a surprisingly good mood. Charles was weird, but Erik thought maybe he could put up with him. If there weren’t any other kids around—he didn’t think there were. He thought his parents probably would have shoved them together at that point if there were—he wouldn’t be so bad to spend time with sometimes.

When he got back his mother interrogated him, asking where he’d been. He told her he’d been in the forest but he didn’t tell her about Charles. He didn’t really know why. He wanted to keep it to himself. He didn’t think she’d believe him even if he actually told her. In the end, he got off fairly easily with a few extra things he was supposed to do and his secret was seemingly safe.

Erik had said it might be a while, but he found himself wanting to go back already that night. In his haste he hadn’t even properly looked at the river.

The next day he was made to do his chores while his mother watched him closely. He could feel her eyes on him at all times throughout the day and he couldn’t think of a way to possibly get away from her. Luckily, the couple from one of the two other houses near them—they were old. Erik was told they’d lived there their whole lives later—and brought a pie along with them. Erik’s mother was forced to attend to them, making conversation and thanking them which meant she paid less attention to Erik.

Erik saw his opportunity and after sitting still around the adults for a while, he was able to slip out unseen. He headed back out for the forest, down along the dirt road. It was a nice day out, sunny and warm. There was some wind that blew his hair back and winded its way through the trees. It was blocked slightly once he ventured deeper in, but it was still fairly cool. Erik tried to follow the path Charles had taken the day before and mostly succeeded. He got lost at one point, but he reached the clearing much quicker.

To his surprise Charles was already there, sitting down on the edge of the river, dangling his feet in. Charles looked about as shocked to see him. “Erik! You said you wouldn’t come back very soon.”

 _Then why are you here?_ Erik wondered, but he only shrugged. “I didn’t know if I’d be able to.” He left it at that and moved to approach Charles who didn’t pester him any further about it at least. There was a tiny smile on his face.

Charles patted the spot next to him in the grass. “Come look. There’s some fish down here today.”

Erik plopped down next to him to look. When he did, he saw that there were actually a few silver fish flitting around in the cool water. They got fairly close to Charles’s feet and he held completely still meanwhile. Erik dipped a finger in and they scattered a little, but drifted back soon after.

“How big is the river?” Erik asked.

“It’s really long,” Charles replied, turning so he could face Erik better. “It pours out into a lake way off that way.” Charles pointed out to his left. “I go over there sometimes, but it’s a long walk.”

“What do you even do out here?” Erik asked, having thought up about a million questions to ask Charles last night. He was determined to figure out as much as he could about everything.

The question seemed to make Charles happy for whatever reason. “Mostly I’m learning all the names of everything right now.” He pointed down to the fish and rattled off some long scientific name for them. “When I’m older I’ll watch the animals and plants and make sure they’re doing okay.”

Erik nodded. “So you protect the forest.”

Charles smiled at him again. “Yes.”

Erik looked down at the fish which were swirling around below them. Light shone off the water and was bent by the small current. “Why don’t you look any different than normal people?”

Charles frowned at him. “We’re normal,” he claimed. “But I don’t know. Why do you look the way you do? Why don’t you have horns or wings or anything? It’s just the way it is.”

“You should be green or something,” Erik said. “For camouflage.”

The other boy shook his head at him. “Then you should be yellow, like your house.”

“That wouldn’t work,” Erik argued. “What if we move to a house with a different color?”

“Will you?” Charles asked, suddenly more serious. “Move away, I mean.”

Erik shrugged. “Someday probably.” Erik didn’t think he’d want to stay there forever.

Charles gave a small nod and looked down at the water again. Erik didn’t understand why he was so bothered over it when they hadn’t even known each other a full day. Besides, he’d dodged the question.

“What makes you different from me if you look the same?” Erik persisted. “You can read minds, but that’s just you.”

“Well,” Charles began, “I can sense things in the forest. I could tell when you came here that something had come in that wasn’t there before. I can feel everything here that’s alive. We’re good at healing and communicating with the animals as well.” Charles pressed his lips together. “There’s other stuff, but I’m not meant to tell anyone.” He turned again and leaned in toward Erik. “I didn’t tell my family about you. I thought they might not let me see you again.”

“I didn’t tell mine either,” Erik confessed.

“Then it can just be our secret,” Charles suggested in that same tone he’d used when he asked if Erik would be his friend. He moved on quickly enough that it didn’t become annoying or strange, luckily. “We’re not really that different, I guess.”

Erik was glad to have the idea confirmed. It was easier for him to fit Charles’s existence into his reality if he thought they were mostly the same. Charles wasn’t any fantastic thing. He just lived in the woods and could do a few tricks. It wasn’t that different.

With that settled, Erik continued his questioning. “How come I can see you but not anyone else? If there are people other than you out here.”

“You can only see me because I’m letting you. I can’t control it that well yet either. But the adults don’t come over here as much or stay too long. It’s too close to the road and there are better, larger areas where animals drink from the river.”

Erik found talking to Charles wasn’t as bad as he’d thought at first. Charles knew a lot about everything in the forest and he pointed it out to Erik. Erik learned more about how Charles spent his time—walking around the forest mostly, or so it seemed to Erik—and that Charles had been told never to leave the forest so he wasn’t sure that he could.

“We’re connected to it,” he explained. “It’d be like chopping off your leg.” Erik supposed that made sense.

He did talk a lot if Erik fell quiet for a while, but if Erik asked him questions his answers weren’t overly long. He also asked a lot of questions. The more he needled Erik, the more Erik became truly convinced that he’d never been out of the forest.

He asked about Erik’s house and about his family and about his old home. He asked about school and what he learned and even about his chores. Erik had never been asked so many questions in his life. Most adults got bored after they asked his age and name. He did get sick of it after a while and he stood up and told Charles to show him the log already. Charles was quick to comply.

They had to cross the river to get to it so Erik took off his shoes and socks and left them in the clearing so he could go barefoot like Charles. They scared away the fish by jumping into the river and went chasing off after them for the fun of it. The water was cool and the current not too strong and Charles told him that it was good to swim in. They scrambled up the other bank of the river together and went running off into the woods. There was less underbrush on the other side of the river for some reason. Erik thought Charles would probably know why but he didn’t feel like asking him at the moment. He was too busy focusing all his attention on chasing after the other boy who was surprisingly quick along with being surefooted in a way that Erik wasn’t.

It felt good to run through the forest as fast as he could go. It was a challenge to dodge around all the trees. Erik laughed when they accidentally scared away a couple of birds as they tore through and Charles laughed along with him. Soon enough they reached the log which was pretty big. Charles climbed into it almost immediately, seeming unconcerned that it might break or that there might be something else in it. Erik was impressed by it and he soon went to follow him in.

The two of them could fit inside if they crammed their knees up against their chests and squeezed. It was dark inside of the tree except for one spot of light where there was a hole in the trunk.

“It’s like a submarine,” Erik said which confused Charles.

“What’s that?” he asked, not joking.

Erik thought that he was going to have an awful lot to explain to Charles. He described a submarine to him, which lead to talk of the ocean.

“I’ve never been to the ocean,” Charles said, sounding wistful.

“I went once,” Erik said, somewhat proud. “There are sharks there, but I didn’t see any.” Erik liked learning about the fish in the ocean and he pestered his mother to read books about them to him when he could.

Charles sighed. “You know a lot more than me. I only know about things that live here.”

“You don’t even know what a shark is?” Erik felt bad for Charles. He supposed they didn’t have books out here either.

Charles shook his head.

“A shark is a big fish with lots of teeth. It’ll die if it stops swimming for too long,” Erik explained.

“How many teeth does it have?” Charles asked because he could always come up with some question or another in response to any statement of Erik’s.

“More than a hundred.”

“Why’s it need so many teeth?”

Erik elbowed Charles who gave a pitiful “Ow!” “You ask too many questions,” Erik complained.

“I can’t help it,” Charles whined. “I want to learn. Come on, tell me about the other ocean fish.”

In spite of himself, Erik did. He told Charles about all the fish he knew and the other ocean mammals he knew about. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever talked so long to anyone before, but he found he didn’t mind talking about things like that. It was at least interesting and Charles seemed impressed and eager to listen to him. Still, eventually Erik got sick of sitting still and pushed Charles out the other side of the log so he could try to climb on top.

They played until the sun hung low in the sky and Erik realized he needed to head back again. They raced back off toward the river and the other side of the woods. Charles lead him back out to the road again and waved goodbye. Erik headed back home, but was surprised how disappointed he was to have to leave.

It became a habit for him to go and play with Charles. He still didn’t tell his parents about him, just said he liked to look around the woods and once his father walked through them and didn’t see anything dangerous he was allowed to go whenever he wanted as long as it wasn’t after dark.

Erik started rushing through his chores so he could get out to the clearing. He learned the quick route there and even started to know the forest better too once Charles showed him around it. Blistering heat rolled in along with summer and they spent a lot of time in the river or in the shade of the trees. Charles showed Erik how to climb some of the trees and Erik tried to answer Charles’s daily million questions about everything and anything.

The trees started dropping their leaves in the fall and Erik’s mother started talking about school, but Erik was more concerned with the fact that leaf piles were just waiting to be gathered and jumped in. Erik started sneaking things from the house to bring to Charles. He smuggled out a few books for him—luckily he could read. Apparently forest people did have books of some sort, just not any interesting ones—and some snack or another that his mother had made more than once and once a stapler because Charles couldn’t understand it when he explained it to him. He got scolded for it a couple of times but it never failed to make Charles smile, so he didn’t care.

Charles remained the same as he had been when Erik first met him, but Erik learned to tolerate his strangeness and his endless smiling and his incessant talking. He was always honest at least and Erik liked that about him. He was always around whenever Erik wanted to play. Erik liked that Charles was fearless when it came to the forest. He liked that Charles would listen to him talk about anything if he felt like it. He especially liked that Charles wasn’t that strong and was also smaller than him which meant he almost always won when they wrestled.

Winter was difficult because he wasn’t allowed out so often. It was cold and it snowed often and there was more to do around the house. His father taught him how to shovel snow and scrape the ice off the windows of their car. Still, Erik endeavored to walk out to the woods when he could. All the leaves were off the trees and they stood dark against the white of the snow. It made it a little easier to get to the river which froze up at one point in mid-December.

Charles wasn’t affected by the cold the way Erik was for some reason and he laughed when Erik showed up all bundled up against the cold. He at least had shoes on, but otherwise he looked the same. Erik pushed him down into the snow for it and a snowball fight ensued.

“Do you like it here?” Erik’s mother asked him one night in early January. “I thought it might be hard to move so far away, but you seem happy.”

Erik was happy, he realized. He didn’t think he’d been unhappy before, but he liked their new home much better than their old one. “I like it here,” he agreed and his mother had smiled.

Really, he was mostly indifferent about the new house and the new country. It didn’t seem too different to him. But this new place had the forest and the clearing, and it had Charles. Erik didn’t realize it for some time, but he’d never really had a friend before Charles either. Being alone was nice, but having a real friend was even better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rating is for later chapters, obviously, but I'm just going to leave it as is so I don't have to switch it constantly.


	2. Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a couple quick notes: I have this whole story written already, so I'll just be posting intermittently when I have time until all the chapters are up I think. Also, if it wasn't clear, the chapter titles will indicate Erik's age throughout.

-10-

The first thing Erik did when he learned his father had finally passed away in the hospital after months of hospice care and long drives and endless waiting and messy procedures was run out to the forest.

His mother had told him over the phone. He was made to stay home and watch the house and the dog, Gal. (For the record, Gal wasn’t actually her full name. She was a mutt Erik had found sniffing around outside their house one day and begged his parents to keep. Eventually they gave in and he’d made the mistake of taking her to show Charles and asking for help naming her. Charles was dead-set on Galadriel, the name of some character from _The Lord of the Rings_ —Erik knew he shouldn’t have brought him those books. Charles was obsessed with them the minute he laid eyes on them and wouldn’t shut up about them for at least four months—which Erik thought was ridiculous and too long. Unfortunately, Charles had gotten stubborn as he was prone to do over stupid little things and somehow used his nature magic nonsense to stick the name in her head and she wouldn’t answer to anything else afterwards. Gal was the best he could do as compromise and she still was stubborn about it most of the time.)

Erik didn’t even think about. He felt numb as he hung up the phone. His mother had been crying too hard to talk anyway and he didn’t know what to do about it. It seemed impossible, like something that he’d heard about but didn’t actually affect him. Shock hit him hard and kept him from reacting properly.

Instead, he turned to put on his coat and his shoes and went out toward the forest. He started off walking but broke out into a run soon after, pushing himself harder and harder until he was panting and his lungs were burning. It was a crisp autumn day out. The sun was out but the wind was biting. Leaves crunched under his feet as he went, scaring away any animals nearby. He reached the clearing and stopped cold.

 _My father is dead_ , he thought to himself, trying out the words in his head, trying to convince himself. _My father is dead and I’ll never see him again. I’ll never talk to him again. He’s gone forever_.

He couldn’t wrap his head around it.

Erik slumped down onto the grass and stared at the river.

It’d been a long six months. Erik’s father had had heart problems all his life, but one day early that year he’d collapsed in the middle of the field from a heart attack. Erik had been outside fortunately and had shouted for help. He’d been in the hospital since then. They’d tried lots of things, but the heart attack had been too much and they didn’t have enough money for more expensive procedures or transplants.

Erik had watched his mother slowly deteriorate with time. She put on a strong face for both of them, but he’d heard her crying late at night after he was supposed to go to bed. He saw the circles under her eyes and the resignation in her face. The house was quiet more often than not and Erik had been escaping outside as often as possible to keep from being suffocated. Even that wasn’t as simple as it used to be. He had to go to school in the nearby town. He walked a half-mile up the lane to catch a bus there every day, rain or shine. He had homework to worry about along with helping out with the house.

Charles was busier as well. He had more responsibilities in the forest to take care of. Still, they spent a fair amount of time together and he’d been a support unknowingly for Erik throughout the difficult time. Erik hadn’t ever told him about what was happening and he must have kept it hidden well enough that Charles couldn’t find out telepathically. He’d gotten better with his powers in the past five years, but that mostly meant keeping them to himself. Erik had told him he preferred Charles not use them if he could help it. He liked to keep his thoughts to himself and Charles had seemed to understand.

Erik hated to see his father so weak. He hated the hospital, the way it smelled, all the bright lights and mushy food and apathetic expressions on the doctors’ faces. Everything about it made him angry to the point where he’d refused go sometimes. He regretted it now.

Erik was still staring at the river when Charles appeared, smiling per usual. “Hello, Eri—” He cut off in the middle of his sentence, and rushed over from where he’d been walking slowly before. “What’s wrong?”

He was standing up above Erik, his eyebrows pulled together in worry. Out of nowhere the tears that hadn’t shown themselves before emerged and blurred Erik’s vision, he swiped at them, ducking his face away from Charles who dropped down to the ground.

“Erik? What’s wrong? Why are you crying?” Charles’s voice was frantic and close.

“I’m not,” Erik said despite how obviously he was. _He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone_ , Erik thought.

Charles must have heard because he gasped a little. “Oh, Erik. I’m so sorry.”

Erik choked on a sob, unable to help himself. He wanted to be strong and not cry, but he couldn’t stop it. When Charles reached out and drug him into an embrace, Erik didn’t fight it. Instead he leaned into his friend heavily, pressing his face hard into his shoulder and soaked his shirt through. His chest and throat ached from it. He couldn’t believe it. He didn’t want to.

It was a long time before he cried himself out. Charles gripped onto him through it. Erik usually didn’t care much for that kind of physical contact, but at the moment it was comforting to have someone else to hold onto. Erik realized belatedly that Charles was crying too, apparently swept up in Erik’s emotions. Erik pulled back finally, sitting up and detaching himself. Charles let him go. His eyes were red too. He wiped at them when Erik pulled away.

Erik took a shaky breath, trying to calm down, but it was difficult. He didn’t know how to deal with the grief that was suddenly crushing him.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Charles asked, his voice small.

Erik shrugged. Mostly he hadn’t wanted the anxiety and sorrow and inevitability that had invaded every other facet of his life to poison his only escape from it. He could pretend that everything was fine much better if Charles was still there to smile and ask how his day was and demand to hear everything he’d learned at school that day.

Charles looked down, seeming conflicted. For some reason, the fact that Charles didn’t know what to do either was comforting. At least Erik wasn’t missing something very obvious. Not even Charles who always seemed to understand emotions better than Erik himself or most other kids his age knew how to handle this.

“I could tell you what my parents told me the first time I found a dead animal in the forest,” Charles said after a moment’s silence, “but I don’t know if it would make you feel better.”

“Tell me anyway,” Erik said, desperate for any distraction.

Charles nodded slowly. He took a moment to scoot closer to Erik, moving so their knees were touching again. “One day I was walking around and I found a doe lying still on her side. I thought she must be sleeping so I waited for her to wake up, but she didn’t. Eventually I realized I couldn’t sense her and that she was dead.

“I screamed and cried until it got my mother’s attention. I showed her the doe, but she wasn’t sad and I didn’t understand. She told me that it wasn’t sad because everything has to die eventually. She told me it was a big circle and this way the deer could fertilize the grass which would grow and get eaten so another deer could be born later.”

Erik clenched his jaw. He didn’t want to think about his father becoming grass.

Charles smiled a tight smile. “Rubbish isn’t it?” Erik coughed out a surprised laugh at the sudden switch in tone. “Didn’t make me feel better at all. It was still sad and I was still hurt. And angry.”

Erik nodded, let Charles talk him through it, let him put words to his more abstract thoughts.

Charles picked at the hem of his trousers. “It sounds kind of silly, but I think it’s better to let yourself feel what you need to feel and be honest about it rather than trying to act like it’s not terrible.”

Erik nodded, let that sink in. “I am angry,” he confessed, surprised by how rough his voice was. He swallowed with some difficulty. “I’m mad this happened at all. It never should have. I don’t understand why he had to get hurt or why his heart had to be bad or why they couldn't help him. He was gone so long and they couldn’t do anything. I thought doctors were supposed to help people.” His voice raised as he spoke and he was almost at a shout by the end, but Charles didn’t flinch back from him. Instead he nodded along, let Erik say what he would. Erik took another deep breath, glad for the crisp air that burned as it went down. He pressed his lips together and looked down at his hands. Before he hadn’t felt anything and now he felt too much. Angry and confused and upset and incredulous and so much more. He felt like all the bad emotions in the world were inside of him, ripping him apart from the inside out. He was sure he’d be empty by the time they were done, hollow as a fallen tree. “I don’t understand,” he repeated, much quieter. “Why’d he have to die?”

Charles reached out and set a hand on his shoulder. Erik fought the urge to slap it away. Before the contact had been nice, but now, like everything else, it was too much. “I don’t know,” Charles admitted. “I don’t understand either. I’m sorry, Erik. I’m so sorry.” He was crying again, steady tears rolling down his cheeks.

Erik did push his hand away then, just shoved at his elbow until his arm bent. Charles retracted it like he’d been burned and cradled it close to himself. It was inevitable that some of the anger roiling around in Erik’s stomach would get directed at him. There was nowhere else for it to go. “Why are _you_ crying?” he demanded. He made the words sharp so Charles would understand that Erik didn’t think he should be.

Charles shrank further into himself slightly, pulled back. He wiped uselessly at his eyes with the backs of his hands and looked back at Erik with wide eyes. “I’m crying because you’re hurt and you’re my friend. I don’t want to see you sad.”

 _But your dad isn’t gone_ , Erik thought irrationally. Charles wasn’t even close with his parents it didn’t seem like. He hardly talked about them fondly, barely even mentioned them. “You could never understand,” Erik snapped, lashing out for lack of any productive way to deal with the situation. It was irrational considering he’d just been looking to Charles for comfort, but he wasn’t thinking straight.

Charles looked like he actually had struck him. He scooted back further away from Erik, seeking to put any distance between them. Hypocritically Erik wished he wouldn’t. The tears were back, dripping along down the sides of his face. He sniffled pathetically. “I just want to help,” he mumbled.

“What can you do?” Erik demanded. “He’s already gone. I can’t do anything and neither can you. You don’t even know what you’re talking about. Seeing some dead animal isn’t the same thing. You didn’t even know him. You don’t deserve to cry!” He was fully shouting at Charles by the end. The trees around them echoed with it.

Charles scrunched his face up and choked on a sob. He got to his feet and glared down at Erik. “I don’t know why you’re yelling at me. Maybe I can’t understand but I didn’t do anything wrong. You’re already hurting, and it’s horrible, so why would you try to hurt me too? I can’t do anything about your dad, but that’s not my fault.” He stayed where he was for a couple of seconds, but then he made to turn and leave, still looking stricken. “I’m sorry about your father, Erik, but taking it out on someone else isn’t going to change what happened and it isn’t going to make you feel better.” With that he disappeared off into the foliage, like he’d never been there in the first place.

Erik instinctively went to go after him but stopped himself. Guilt flashed through him, but he ignored it for the time being. He didn’t have the patience to deal with Charles at the moment anyway. He didn’t know why he’d come out there in the first place. Scrambling to his feet, Erik glared at the river, just going on its merry way like nothing was different, like everything was going on fine. A gust of cold wind and the shade from a cloud that rolled over the sun shook him enough to get him moving again. He stomped off into the woods, still burning with rage at the world and at Charles and at the doctors and at himself.

He stopped in the middle of it just to yell up at the sky. It helped to release some of the tension in his chest at least. He stayed stock still, listening to it echo for a few moments, before he sprinted off home. He made it back inside where Gal was waiting. She skittered over to him, nosing at his legs, completely unaware of what had happened. Still, he didn’t have it in him to be angry with her too. It had all rushed out of him in the woods. He felt like he’d thrown up: empty and wretched. He dropped down to the floor and gathered her up against him. Gal sat obediently and let him hug her as he wanted.

He held onto her like a lifeline for what seemed like ages. Eventually she got antsy, started snuffling at his neck and licking underneath his ear and he had to let her go. He wasn’t sure he could move, but after a couple of tries he got back up unsteadily onto his feet. He noticed there was a message on the phone and walked over to call his mother back. He didn’t need to listen to it to know it was her.

Erik’s mother sounded more collected on the phone this time and relieved to hear from him. She said she wouldn’t be back that night because she had things to take care of at the hospital. Erik told her that he understood. She asked him over and over again if he was okay and instructed him on what to do for dinner that night. She reminded him to feed Gal and make sure the doors were locked overnight, normal things. It was something for him to focus on and where the idea of things moving on had irritated him initially, now the mundanity of the tasks were something to grasp onto.

Eventually they said goodbye and Erik hung up the phone. As he went about mechanically completing the chores his mother had laid out for him, he thought that at least the world didn’t feel like it was falling apart quite so much anymore. His chest still ached and he felt unsteady, but he could walk and feed Gal and put away the dishes in the dishwasher and that was enough for the time being.

As he was reheating some dinner in the microwave however, the guilt coalesced in his stomach, heavy and unyielding. He squeezed his eyes closed and braced against it, but it was no use. He shouldn’t have said what he had to Charles; he knew that. He couldn’t help it at the time but it still wasn’t an excuse. There was no reason both of them should be hurting. Maybe Charles couldn’t understand but he’d only been trying to help.

Erik kept seeing Charles’s crying face in his mind. It stung, hurt in a more immediate way than his father’s passing did—that was more of an all-encompassing, drowning kind of sorrow—to know he’d caused it. It wasn’t the first time he’d made Charles cry—to be fair, Charles had always cried easily—but it was by far the most direct and purposeful attempt.

Charles was the last person who deserved to be hit with the fallout of all of this. He’d been the one person who he could be with and everything could seem normal the past six months. He lived in a small town and so news of his father’s sickness had travelled fast meaning that the kids at school had been acting strange around him for about as long. He didn’t really like them much anyway, but he’d been avoiding them completely after that.

It made school even more of a pain than usual. Back at home, his mom was constantly trying to juggle a million things. The phone was always ringing and people were always coming over trying to shove mediocre casseroles off on them like Erik’s father being gone made them unable to function properly anymore. His mother did her best but it was a challenge to get her attention most of the time, even when he really needed it. Gal was about the same, he supposed, but she was also a dog and didn’t really count.

But when he went out to the clearing, he could be free of it all for a few hours. Charles would show up and smile and talk with him normally. He always interrogated Erik about what he learned at school, begged him to bring along his worksheets so he could keep up and learn as well. If Erik asked and sometimes if he didn’t, he’d go on about his day. They’d still play in the river if it was hot out or find something else to do if it was colder.

Erik didn’t feel like he was constantly being watched when he was around Charles the way he had every second he was around any adult who knew. It was like they were looking for something, but he didn’t know what it was and he didn’t appreciate the excess attention.

No, Charles didn’t deserve it at all.

The microwave beeped, but Erik ignored it. He didn’t feel much like eating anyway. Instead he moved to throw on his coat and put on his shoes so he could head back outside. It was dark by that point so he took a flashlight. He wasn’t meant to be outside, technically, although his parents were less strict about the rule than they had been when he was younger. He took a key as well and locked the door behind him, telling Gal to guard the house for him.

The woods were always different at night. The trees loomed and cast long, wavering shadows. The wind whistled through like a howl sometimes and every misstep seemed to cause a terrible noise in the silence of the night. It was harder to find your way around as well. Erik always thought he could feel more things around him at night than he ever could during the day, but he ignored them and hurried on. He didn’t know if he’d be able to find Charles, but there were a couple places he could at least check.

He tried the clearing first but it was empty. After that he jumped over the river and headed off to the other side of the woods. Sometimes when he was moping Charles liked to go back to the fallen tree he’d showed Erik the day after they’d met for the first time. Neither of them could fit inside very well anymore and it was deteriorating quickly but Charles still climbed up on it sometimes. After that Erik would check a tree Charles liked to sit under sometimes when he read. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if he couldn’t find him anywhere, but he decided he’d figure that out later if it came to it.

Erik tried to approach quietly, though he knew Charles would be able to tell he was there one way or another anyway. He was almost afraid to look, but as he came up to the log he could see in the sparse moonlight filtering down through the branches above a figure up on top of the log. Relief eased some of the tightness in his chest and he forced himself to keep going.

Once he was at the base of it, he looked up at Charles who seemed to be ignoring him. He was gripping hard onto the edge of the log and looking off into the dark of the forest. Erik didn’t know what to say.

“Charles,” he called. The other boy didn’t acknowledge him. Erik looked down at his feet. “I’m sorry that I yelled at you. I shouldn’t have. You were right, it really didn’t help. It’s just—” He cut off. He didn’t know how to put it into words properly. “Please don’t be mad at me.”

Charles let out a small breath and finally turned toward him. His face was guarded, but he didn’t look too angry. He stared at Erik for a long while before he dropped down off the log, landing lightly and coming around so they were face to face again. “I’m not mad at you,” he said. “You were just sad. You still shouldn’t have yelled at me.”

Erik nodded, taking the mild scolding without protest.

“I’m sorry I left you alone,” Charles continued, his eyebrows pulling together. He pulled at his fingers like he did when he was nervous sometimes. “You’re my friend and you were hurting. I shouldn’t have done that even if you were being mean to me.”

“It’s okay,” Erik said. The fact that Charles wasn’t too upset with him was a large weight off his shoulders. With it gone he slumped up against the side of the log, letting it take most of his weight. “I had to call my mom anyway. She’s still at the hospital.”

“You’re all alone in the house?” Charles asked, concern bleeding into his voice. He was back to looking at Erik directly, the previous spat apparently forgotten.

“Not completely. I have Gal.”

Charles smiled a little at the mention, but it didn’t last very long. “I don’t want you to be all alone right now. Gal’s a good dog, but still.”

“It’s not like you could come sleep at my house,” Erik said, then hesitated. “Could you?”

Charles shook his head. “I can’t leave the forest.” He’d told Erik once he found that out for sure. Another, less convenient aspect of being like Charles was that each person like him was attached to one forest and they couldn’t stray beyond it. If they detached themselves, it would be like pulling a plant out at the roots. Eventually, even with food and water and space it would die. Charles looked at him somewhat hopefully. “Could you come out here?”

Erik pondered that. He would like to not have to be all alone in the house and if he was going to be around anyone at the moment he still wanted it to be Charles. “It’s kind of cold out,” he pointed out.

He’d drug a tent out there more than once before. The first time had been secret and he’d gotten grounded for two weeks because of it. He’d had to pass it off as an attempt at camping rather than a visit with a friend and it hadn’t gone over well with his parents. The second was in the middle of summer and he was more careful. He did tell them he was going to sleep outside because it was hot and they’d begrudgingly agreed.

Erik stopped thinking about it because his dad was in those memories and it hurt to remember. Charles seemed to be considering that. “It’s your choice.”

Erik decided he’d just bring as many blankets as possible along with him when he went. “Alright,” he said. “I’ll run back and get the tent.”

Charles smiled at him and nodded. “I’ll meet you back in the clearing.”

The two of them set off. Erik ran off back home to gather his supplies. It was a lot to carry but he managed. He wasn’t too worried about the house. He doubted they had much anyone would want to take and anyway they lived so far out it couldn’t possibly matter. That in mind, he took Gal along with him. He didn’t want to leave her all alone. She was bound to do more damage than a burglar and he didn’t want his mom to come home and find that. He brought about twenty blankets along with his sleeping bag and the tent. All together he was almost falling over by the time he made it back out to the clearing where Charles was sitting and waiting for him, looking down into the river.

He got to his feet and ran to help Erik when he saw, laughing. Erik laughed too, just for the sake of doing it. Gal bounded up and sniffed at Charles, winding in between his legs and almost knocking him over. She seemed happy to see him. After he’d planted the name in her head, Erik had a feeling she thought of Charles as her actual master and Erik just as a substitute. He’d been jealous for a while, but eventually it’d become too tiring to keep that up. Charles ended up dropping most of the blankets he’d grabbed to pet her. Erik ended up having to shoo her away. Charles spoiled her too much, not used to having a dog around.

They put up the tent together and then stuffed it full of the blankets before they crawled in. It occurred to Erik that they’d have to leave it open at least a little in case Gal had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night but for the time being she jumped in with them and Erik zipped the flap shut. It was incredibly crowded in there with both of them and a dog that wouldn’t lie down because she was too excited. She knocked both of them over in the midst of everything and whacked Erik in the face with her tail too many times to count. Still, they were laughing by the end of it. Eventually they wrangled her into a corner where she laid down.

Erik suspected Charles of using some of his ability to influence animals. Charles caught wind of the thought and smiled mischievously at him.

With Gal settled they could finally get situated, squashed up into the other side of the tent that wasn’t occupied. Erik squirmed into his sleeping bag and collapsed down, sighing heavily. He only realized how exhausted he was when he finally laid down and let the ground take all of his weight. The tent was warm as well for all that it was crowded. It was sort of nice actually. Erik felt better with the three of them safe in the small space, protected and where he could see the other two. Charles lay down next to him, making do with the blankets which he seemed to like more for their softness than for their warmth.

“There,” Charles said when he was finally settled. “Is it cold?” He really didn’t know. Erik had asked at one point and Charles admitted that bad weather didn’t really bother him. Even in the dead of winter he could walk around barefoot and not have any issue at all. Erik was jealous. The winters could get nasty out in the middle of the countryside.

“No,” Erik replied. “How did you get your family to let you do this?”

Charles had ended up telling his parents at some point about Erik, seemingly against his will. They’d sensed him in the woods too much and had bullied the answer out of Charles who’d broken eventually. They weren’t happy as far as Erik could tell—Charles downplayed it as he did with everything involving his parents or his people—but they hadn’t forbid it. Charles was stubborn enough that he didn’t care at all about their disapproval. Erik had kept quiet. His parents granted him enough freedom to run around as long as he stayed on the property that it didn’t matter so much for him.

“I just told them I felt like sleeping outside tonight,” Charles said, curling up on his side, facing Erik. “I do like to sometimes. I like to look up at the stars. It’s not like I was lying.”

Erik nodded and didn’t push further. That was one of the topics Charles didn’t like to talk about and Erik tried not to ask if he could help it. He closed his eyes, pressed them tightly shut. At least being tired meant that everything else inside him was dulled slightly.

“Would you want to talk about it?” Charles asked and Erik opened his eyes to find his friend looking at him intently. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Erik wasn’t sure and Charles must have sensed it. “I could ask you questions and you can say ‘pass’ if you don’t want to answer it,” he suggested.

Erik was still dubious but he nodded. At least talking about it a little might help cement the reality of it in his head. He kept having to remind himself and it was like jumping repeatedly into ice water, scrambling out, and then going right back in. He wished he could just get it straight in his head already.

“How long has he been sick?” Charles asked, keeping his voice quiet.

Not so bad. “Six months. He had a heart attack and that started it all. He’s been mostly in the hospital since.”

Charles nodded. “Was it nice? The hospital.”

A spike of anger flared up in Erik’s chest but he fought it back. “It was…okay. I hated it there. It was too white and too clean and they wouldn’t let him leave. But my mom always said it was the best place for him. Sometimes I wouldn’t go with her because I hated it so much.” It all came flowing out of him once he’d started. He hadn’t meant to confess that last part, but now there it was, out in the open. Guilt gnawed at him.

But Charles just nodded, kept his face mostly neutral. Erik didn’t know what he’d expected. For Charles to yell at him? “If he was there for six whole months missing a few visits was bound to happen one way or another. What was wrong with his heart?”

And just like that they were off the subject. Erik found he didn’t mind the fast pace of Charles’s questions, particularly because Charles asked them very neutrally and didn’t comment much or blame him for anything. Charles asked him all about his father’s condition and Erik answered most of the time and passed the rest. He didn’t like talking about the day it’d happened because he’d been so close by or that night when he’d been rushed away.

“Would you want to tell me about him?” Charles asked some time later. “I’ve heard you talk about him before, but not a lot.”

Erik wasn’t so sure about that. He didn’t know if talking about his father while he was alive would just make it worse or not. Nothing to do but try he supposed. “He’d been trying to teach me how to play chess before it happened,” Erik said. “He’s—he was really good at it.” Switching constantly to past tense was a constant ache. Erik sought for a memory further back, one that would have to be in past tense even if his father was still alive. “There’s a good ice cream shop in town and my dad and I liked to gang up on my mom and convince her to go.” That was better. The memory was still bright in his mind, not tainted by the news. It reminded Erik that he hadn’t lost everything. “He’d always order the same flavor no matter how many times we went. Always mint chocolate chip. My mom liked to make fun of him for it.”

Erik spent the next stretch of time telling Charles all about his father. He talked about how he liked to build models and how he’d taught Erik to rake the leaves into the perfect pile and how only he could make eggs just the right way—his mother always overcooked them just a little. It poured out of him all at once, but he was determined to do his father justice in Charles’s mind, to paint a complete picture so that someone else could remember him besides Erik and his mother.

Charles listened as intently as he always did, never once dropping off to sleep. He kept his interruptions to a minimum as well which was the more impressive feat for him. Erik didn’t think about it much in the moment but later he would be incredibly grateful for it. Without realizing it, Erik started back at the very beginning of his life and went forward to the present until he finally hit the December right before it had happened.

There was lots of snow which made it so his family was stuck inside more than once. That was when his dad had started to teach him chess. In spite of the weather, it had been a good month. Five years after the move, they were truly settling in. Erik’s father had a steady job and the house was in much better working order than it had been when they first moved in. Hanukkah had been a bigger occasion that it had been in a while, all lights and hymns and little extra gifts.

Erik supposed that now that would all be gone, the peace they’d worked hard to achieve decimated in one fell swoop.

Erik got through telling Charles about that before he came to a stop. “And then it happened,” Erik concluded. “Right after that.”

Charles nodded. He’d propped his face up in his hand at some point, laying with his elbow supporting him. He was clearly waiting for Erik to keep going, but Erik thought that was more than enough for one night. He was tired of talking anyway. He did feel a little better after all of that. All he’d talked about for six months was how his father was doing in the present, when he was sick. It was nice to go back and talk about him when he’d been himself.

Charles seemed to understand that he was done. “I do wish you would have told me sooner,” Charles murmured. “I could have helped you maybe. I didn’t know for so long.”

Erik thought that Charles had done more than enough that night alone, but he didn’t know how to say it. “I wonder if I’ll ever get used to it,” he said instead.

Charles pondered that. In the corner, Gal snuffled in her sleep. “I don’t know.”

Erik nodded, taking the honesty the best he could, thoroughly exhausted. He had no idea how late it was, knew that he couldn’t be out of the house when his mother came back the next day. “I think I want to go to sleep.” In spite of himself, he was a little nervous that he’d have nightmares.

Charles must have felt his anxiety too because he asked, “Want me to tell you a story?”

“Okay.” It’d been a while since he’d last heard one of Charles’s stories. Erik assumed they came from his people because Charles wasn’t the most creative person story-wise. Still, they were interesting to listen to every once in a while.

“I’ll tell you the raven one,” Charles said, mostly to himself as he curled up further into the blankets around them. Erik did the same, settling in for the night.

He closed his eyes, let the terrible day slip away as he listened to Charles tell him about a boy who could turn into a raven and about the places he went and the lessons he learned. He focused just on the words, not really absorbing them, only listening. A lovely silence came over his mind and eventually he was able to fall asleep.

Erik slept without dreaming and when he woke up, half-blinded by the early morning sunlight, Charles was still curled beside him, sleeping soundly. Erik was glad. What could have been a long, hard night had transformed into a bright, warm morning. The realization of what had happened hit him again, but it didn’t throw him completely over as it had the day before.

Everything wasn’t better. The hurt of it was still present in his mind, but he thought he would be okay anyway. Oddly, he felt a little hopeful as Charles finally stuttered awake, yawning with his mouth wide open and bidding Erik a groggy “good morning.” Erik couldn’t imagine anything more horrible than what had happened, so it stood to reason that if they could make it through this, they could make it through anything.


	3. Fifteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One step forward and two steps back, per usual ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

-15-

Erik wasn’t sure when he first noticed it.

Maybe it was when he was a kid and the little boys were still chasing around the little girls and teasing them because they hadn’t yet learned how to approach them in any polite way. Maybe it was when he was eleven or twelve and the other boys started whispering about crushes and some even started “dating.” Maybe it was when he was fourteen and moved up to the secondary school building, even further away from his house. That was about the time some of the girls started growing breasts and getting curves. That was also when the brunt of the hormones arrived and suddenly the boys—well, the idiotic ones—were obsessed with drawing phallic symbols everywhere and giggling about it. Maybe it was earlier that year when one warm day in early March Charles had decided he wanted to swim in the river—Erik was not as enthusiastic about the idea—and when he stripped off his shirt Erik was torn between looking away and staring.

Either way, it had become some kind of strange truth in Erik’s mind, cemented there for better or worse. (Well, really there were two truths there, but he wasn’t quite ready to deal with the second yet. That particular aspect of himself would have to wait until college for him to properly confront it.) It ate away at him and sometimes pressed images into his mind that made his face feel warm.

It was a simple thought: Charles was pretty.

Not pretty in the way the women in the magazines were pretty, but pretty in a way that sometimes made Erik feel like he had a small bird stuck in his chest when he looked at him. Realistically, the thought had probably just occurred to him one day, popped into his head. It’d taken a while for him to notice, but now that he had he couldn’t seem to get beyond it.

Mostly, he ignored it the best he could but it was still difficult. For that reason it was lucky they didn’t see each other as often as they used to, hadn’t for years. Erik was busier with school and exams and he just didn’t have hours to spend out in the woods any more. He’d even managed to make another friend which was unheard for him. He’d gone through most of his life with only Charles as his bedrock, singular companion, through hell or high water, sickness and health. They’d had their fights over the years but at that point, ten years into their friendship, it was highly unlikely that they would part ways over a petty quarrel.

Raven lived in the city making her five minute commute a far cry from Erik’s thirty minute one. Really, she’d glommed onto him more than he’d done anything himself. She’d somehow picked him out of the crowd as someone with low standards and no other options and hung around for a while until she’d found he wasn’t going to chase her off. She was fiery and single-minded, unafraid to voice her opinion about things. Erik didn’t mind her. She was less naïve than Charles—life had hardened her in some way she hadn’t yet opened up to him about. She liked to dye her hair a striking red color and complain to Erik about the state of the arts program at their school.

Altogether, she made Erik’s days at school a little less agonizing. She was also someone to do homework with and spend time with other than Charles which Erik assumed was good for him. (They balanced out well because she was shit at math and he couldn’t analyze literature worth anything. He liked to read fine but trying to find symbolism in everything drove him crazy.)

Charles had more to do in the forest as well. He wasn’t allowed to run off and play whenever he wanted anymore. Instead, he had what appeared to be organized shifts doing whatever it was he did. Patrolled, catalogued, that sort of thing. He’d grown much more adept in his abilities over the past five years. He could tell immediately when Erik stepped into the forest and where everything was at a given time. He had a better hold over his telepathy at well. Mostly he seemed to use it to communicate—however well one could communicate—with the animals of the forest, and otherwise kept to himself for which Erik was grateful.

They tried to meet up about twice a month at the least, or at least that had been the idea a year ago when they’d realized their schedules were stretching thinner. Erik also had a lot to do at home, helping his mother around the house and with their small plot of land. After his father’s death, she’d taken on two jobs and they’d started growing food to sell more seriously. Erik knew he’d need to start working to help support them as well pretty soon. He’d already been looking for jobs.

Now twice a month had become the norm. Sometimes it was only once. Erik did miss the days when they’d meet up as often as possible sometimes. It was nostalgic to think back on those years. But it couldn’t stay that way forever. In some ways, Erik was itching to move on. Even the tiny town he lived in was beginning to feel suffocating. He was determined to go off to university somewhere in an actual city with actual roads and actual working phone signal. He’d have to take out loans most likely and work to pay them off himself, but that was fine with him. He needed a good education to get a good job and eventually it would pay off. That way he could support his mother, he figured, maybe move her somewhere nicer where she wouldn’t have to work so hard.

He’d been trapped in the same place for too long. Even Raven who lived in the city agreed with him that this was a dead end. She felt the same need to get away and Erik was glad to have someone to sympathize with. He hadn’t really mentioned it to Charles who he figured wouldn’t be able to understand because Charles couldn’t leave. Charles would stay in the same place his entire life whether he liked it or not, and he seemed content with it.

That made it all the more frustrating that Erik felt the way he did about him of all people.

Not to mention the fact that Charles was supposed to be his friend. Even with the distance that had nestled between them naturally as they grew up, Erik was attached to Charles. He loved him as he’d always loved him. They’d been together so long that Erik couldn’t imagine life without Charles in it, and maybe that was the problem.

Sometimes Erik wondered if he’d just grown dependent on his friend and that distance was the way to go. The thought made him ache with the possibility of such a loss, but that made it all the more valid a worry.

Still, for the time being, the last thing Erik wanted to do was make Charles uncomfortable. So he thought Charles was pretty, big deal. He thought lots of people were pretty (not necessarily true, but he felt better telling himself that).

Erik didn’t know what else he was supposed to think when Charles’s smile lit up his whole face, and his eyes matched the sky, and his lips drew Erik’s gaze when he talked, looking like he’d been biting them all day. He’d tried to beat the idea out of his mind several times and failed completely, so now he lived with it and tried desperately to shield those kinds of thoughts from Charles when he was around him and every once in a while guiltily took them to bed with him.

That did mean he begrudged going to meet him about as much as he longed to do so which was impossibly frustrating. To balance it out, Erik held himself to the two meetings per month, usually scheduled ahead of time.

The next one was planned for the middle of his spring break. Anxiety roiled around in his stomach, kept him up half the night before. His dreams were no help either. His subconscious had absolutely no shame and sometimes it meant waking up already half sick with embarrassment. Still, when the next morning rolled around, calm and pleasantly sunny, Erik forced himself to pack his bag, get dressed, and head out to the forest. Mostly he told his mom he was visiting Raven who she was actually able to meet and knew existed—he had a bad feeling she thought Raven was his girlfriend, but that would have to be sorted out at a later date—if she was around.

She wasn’t that morning, already off to work. Erik felt guilty going off when she was still out, but there was nothing to be done about it. Gal jerked awake and trotted over when she heard him out in the kitchen. He petted her head and the graying fur there. She hadn’t been a puppy when he’d first found her and he suspected she was reaching upwards of nine or ten already. Still, she was full of energy and sometimes went with Erik when he went out running.

Erik left a note for his mother before he set out. He tried desperately to settle his nerves as he walked through the forest with the same old argument that never made anything better. _You’ve been friends for ten years. What’s the point in getting nervous? It’s only Charles_. But that was the issue in the first place, so it was a null argument.

The sun shone brightly into the clearing, reflected off the water which was starting to run properly again after the winter freeze. Some fish were getting swept in from the wider sections on down. The trees were full and green and everywhere plants were blooming. The air was sweet and warm. Erik was sure Charles would be in a good mood because of it. He loved springtime.

It took Charles some time to show up nowadays, so Erik settled down to knock out some of the algebra problems which he’d been assigned over break. Better to get them done early and not have to think about them anymore.

He’d gotten through almost fourteen by the time Charles made his appearance, stepping out from among the trees across the river. Erik’s eyes flew up immediately from the paper and Charles beamed at him like he always did. “Erik!” he called. “Hello!”

Erik waved at him in response, forcing himself to stay seated and trying to force his heart to beat normally. Charles jumped over the stream in a single graceful bound and walked over to where Erik was sitting, plopping down next to him and peek at what he was doing. He was close enough for their arms to brush and Erik fought the urge to scoot away.

“There’re more letters than numbers now,” Charles remarked. “I’ll never understand that about advanced mathematics.”

Charles was somehow worse at math than Raven which was saying something. He had a brain for science, but he wasn’t as good with numbers. Theory was where he excelled which meant, really, he should have been better off now than he had been. That wasn’t completely true. “It’s because at this point it’s theoretical,” Erik explained. “The longer you go, the more it’s about derivations of formulas and the formulas have to fit any number so it can’t be so specific.”

“Oh,” Charles said. His eyes wandered off then, over to Erik’s bag, and he gave him a winning smile, batted his eyes like a spoiled kid. Which he was. “Anything for me?”

“One of these days I’m going to say no and you’re going to feel silly,” Erik chided him, before he reached over to grab at the bag. He and Charles both knew that day would never come because Erik couldn’t help it. Besides, it was only books. Charles acted like it was something exciting. Well, maybe to him it was. Charles was book-crazy, always had been. Erik pulled out the volume of poetry he’d brought. His teacher had made them go through some Walt Whitman and he’d thought Charles might like it. He handed it over to the other boy who took it and poured over it eagerly. “Some days I feel like you’re a duck I mistakenly decided to feed one day and now you won’t leave me alone, always coming over and looking for more breadcrumbs.”

“Quack, quack,” Charles said, in an impressive imitation of a duck, giving Erik a cheeky little grin he wore when he thought he’d done something particularly amusing before he went back to the book. “Thank you, Erik. It looks lovely.”

Erik shook his head to keep up appearances and so as not to encourage Charles to make animal noises in response to statements. “It’s poetry,” he explained, “so I don’t know if you’ll like it.”

“I’m sure I’ll enjoy it,” Charles said, stretching his legs out in front of him.

“Would you mind if I finish these problems?” Erik asked. He didn’t really need to, but he thought it would help him clear his head from the initial effect of seeing Charles again, practically glowing in the midst of the nice day and happy to see him. It probably wouldn’t, but it was worth a shot.

“Not at all,” Charles said, chipper as ever, already going to open the book. “Take your time. Feel free to ask if you need any help.”

Erik chuckled. “If I need a break, I don’t think getting you involved would be the best way to go about it.”

Charles knocked his shoulder against Erik’s in retaliation and then turned back to the book, easy as anything. Erik envied his ability to be so casual and familiar. Meanwhile, he turned back to his problems and tried to focus on working through them.

Charles had grown into himself the past couple of years. He was still pretty short—something Erik thought was unlikely to ever change, though he had been wrong before—but his limbs weren’t so gangly anymore because of it. The edge of his jaw was beginning to be more clearly defined as well. On the other hand, his face still made him look younger than he was and he still became covered in freckles every summer.

He was about as naïve as when Erik had first met him, and was still an insufferable optimist at the best of times. He still liked to learn and would talk for hours if you let him. The additional years had given him an edge of confidence that hadn’t been there, an assuredness in himself and his abilities. It could be annoying, but it was also attractive, unfortunately.

Sometimes Erik wondered if Raven would get along with Charles or not. He thought they’d either hit it off immediately or she wouldn’t want anything to do with him. Either way it would probably be amusing to watch. Yet Erik wasn’t really sure he wanted to bring her out there in the first place. The clearing had always only been his and Charles’s place and he was reluctant to change that even as he had thoughts of leaving.

Charles turned the pages of the book steadily beside him, drawing his knees in closer to prop its spine up against his thighs. He read slowly, sometimes staring at a page for a long time before he moved on. Erik had been the same way. He’d struggled with reading it, but he sort of liked that you had to spend some time with a poem before you could really understand it. Whitman wrote about nature some so he thought Charles would appreciate that. He was sure to find out what he thought soon enough one way or another.

Erik scratched his way through his last problem. He’d have to be sure to go back and check them later. He’d finished off every one, got to some answer, but with how unfocused he was there was no way to be sure that it was the right one. When he was done, he put his paper and materials away, packed them back up into his bag. Charles kept his book open for a minute longer. He’d brought the book up close to his face, to the point where it was probably bad for his eyes, and was laser-focused on a single page.

It was almost funny how closely he was looking at it. Erik took the book by a corner and gently pulled it away. Charles snapped back into reality from wherever he’d been before, starting in surprise.

“Alright?” Erik asked.

Charles nodded, closing the book. “I like it, but I have to think about them for a while sometimes.”

“That’s how it was for me too. We studied some of the poems in class.”

“Oh? How is school?” Charles started in on his usual interrogation. “You’ll have to tell me how Raven’s doing as well. I feel as though I haven’t heard about her in ages.”

(Erik had told Charles about Raven because he told Charles almost everything. He hadn’t thought about it, but Charles took it very well in that he immediately wanted to know everything about her and demanded regular updates on her life as well as Erik’s. Erik felt a little disappointed over it, but he wasn’t sure why. Maybe he’d thought Charles would be at least a little jealous, but far from it.)

Erik started in on his usual spiel about what had gone on in the past couple weeks. He told Charles about the book they’d started in English and about what they were learning in history. He brushed over math and spent most of his time on biology because he knew that interested Charles the most. It was probably the topic Charles actually already knew the most about, but he’d always liked to learn about life in places other than deciduous forests. Whenever he got on the topic Charles was sure to drill him for at least fifteen minutes with additional questions. Erik was at the point of just photocopying his notes and handing them to Charles.

He thought that his teacher would love Charles if he was actually in their class because the other kids were not at all interested in biology most of the time. It was one of the later periods in the day and by then everyone had exhausted their available brainpower. Erik had told him before that he’d definitely be a teacher’s pet if he could go to school—something he was always vaguely disappointed that he was barred from doing—to which he’d replied, “Well, you’re in school to learn aren’t you? Why would you not ask questions?” which proved it.

“Raven’s doing well,” Erik said once they’d gotten beyond the biology block. “She’s working on some big art project and complaining that there’s no space for her to work.”

Charles laughed. “She and her other artsy friends really ought to get together and either try to raise money or do something organized in protest.”

Erik rolled his eyes. “I’m glad you two don’t actually know each other. She’d be sure to do it as soon as she got wind of the idea and I’d get dragged along some way or another.” As for the donations, about everyone in their town was too poor to have money to spare, but Erik kept that to himself. Charles didn’t really understand financial trouble, never had, and explaining it to him was too much effort for the amount of shame it caused Erik.

“You don’t want to support your friend?” Charles demanded, raising his eyebrows.

“Not if it means being a part of some stupid protest to get an art building,” Erik grumbled. “I’ve got better things to spend my time on.”

“That’s not very nice,” Charles scolded him, though there was an undertone of amusement in his voice. “You can’t treat her the same way you treat me yet. You haven’t known her long enough.”

Erik gave him an incredulous look. “How is it that I treat you?”

“Horribly,” Charles lamented immediately. “You wound me all the time. You’re always laughing at me and making fun of my ideas. You act like my questions are the biggest burden in the world when I only want to know as much as I can about the daily happenings in the life of my dear friend.”

Erik did laugh at him. “Shove off. You _are_ the biggest burden the world. You have no idea how good you have it. Your questions would drive any normal person crazy.”

“Moreover, I sometimes feel like your elderly grandmother whom you’re forced to go visit twice a month but never really want to,” Charles continued on, ignoring him completely and seemingly getting to the heart of the issue.

Erik pressed his lips together, and felt a little guilty. “We’ve talked about this before, Charles. I’m busier now. I can’t run out here whenever I want. I thought you understood that.”

Charles looked down at his knees, losing the joking curve of his mouth. He exhaled slowly through his nose. “I know. I just miss you. I hardly see you anymore and I know why but that doesn’t really make it feel better.”

Erik felt a spike of annoyance not only at Charles’s inability to just take what he was given but at how easily he voiced those kinds of things. Erik missed Charles too, but he never would have said it so directly. He bit it back the best he could and stayed silent, looking out at the river because it would be easier than looking at Charles.

The silence that stretched between them was uncomfortable and Erik knew it was his fault, but he also didn’t really know how to fix it. Fortunately, Charles always tried to smooth over any rifts rather than let them fracture into true conflict whenever possible.

“I’m sorry,” Charles said eventually. “We had talked about it. I just feel stuck here sometimes.”

Erik felt the same way, but in a different context. Something in his chest ached because part of him wished that he could just spend all his free time out there with Charles, see him more, every day even, like he used to. But that part of him wasn’t really thinking straight, so he did his best to ignore it.

“It’s okay,” he said, if only to make sure the conversation didn’t stop there. “I get it.”

Another quick pause and then, “How’s your mother been?”

It was like that, sometimes, between them. There were things they didn’t talk about even when it felt like they talked about everything. There were things that went unsaid, questions that went unasked. Charles had some of his own, but Erik didn’t know what they were or why he kept them to himself when he was usually open to a fault. Erik clutched his close out of fear, plain and simple. Maybe it was the same for his friend. Sometimes those things would surface anyway, flash into their sight, but inevitably they’d turn away, move on as if they hadn’t seen.

Erik wasn’t sure it was better that way, but he answered the question and let it happen, as he always did. Sometimes it felt like leaving a wound unattended, but for one reason or another it always seemed better to let it bleed than to draw attention to the fact that someday the blood would run out.

It was early afternoon by the time they made it through their usual round of questioning and catch-up. From there the day was open. If it was during school, sometimes Erik had Charles quiz him on vocab or formulas, but Erik didn’t have much to do with it being spring break. If he had nothing, usually Charles came up with something or another. Erik had taken to dragging out his dad’s old chess set for the two of them to play with as well. It’d taken him three years after his father’s death to be brave enough to pull it out and dust it off, but he was glad once he did it. He felt better knowing that it was being put to good use and kept in good condition.

He’d had to teach Charles, but Charles learned quickly as he always did and soon managed to grow into a fearsome opponent in spite of not having access to other partners outside of their games. He had a mind for strategy in the same way Erik did and the games could last hours. It was one of Erik’s preferred activities on days like these because they were both absorbed in the game and could spend time together without grasping for things to talk about (and as a result trodding on more sensitive subjects).

Erik hadn’t brought it that day, too weighed down by books already. “It’s nice out,” Charles pointed out. “We could go swimming.”

Erik thought that was a terrible idea. “It’s not that hot out,” he complained. It was, but Charles didn’t need to know that.

Swimming was sort of the wrong word for it anyway. The river wasn’t deep enough for them to actually swim, so it was more like going down and sitting in the water. It also necessitated that they undress which Erik wanted to avoid at all costs. Charles paraded around shirtless often enough of his own volition; he didn’t need any more opportunities.

Charles considered that, then turned to smile at Erik. “We could always play bird bingo.”

Erik groaned audibly. Bird bingo was possibly Charles’s worst idea yet which was saying a lot, and it was made even worse by the fact that Erik had accidentally agreed to it some years ago—a decision that haunted him to that day—which meant that it’d stuck around seemingly for all of eternity. Erik didn’t think he’d ever be free. He’d be rolling in his grave whenever a birdwatcher came near because of it.

It was a birdwatching game which was all anyone needed to know to decide that it was terrible, but it mostly consisted of wandering around the forest for hours and trying to spot birds which had names that started with the same letter as one of the letters in “bingo.” Incidentally, there were no “n” birds even remotely in the vicinity which meant that you had to find another bird with an “n” somewhere in its name and then argue for its inclusion. That shouldn’t have been difficult, since it was a known fact that there were no other options, but Charles always made a fuss over it, acting like Erik was being ridiculous when he pointed out a robin.

It took hours to complete and was completely unfair because Erik didn’t have mystical forest magic that let him sense where any bird was at any given time. Charles swore he didn’t cheat but sometimes Erik wished he would, if only to put him out of his misery. He was sure Charles used the game to sadistically torture him when he wouldn’t help decide what they were going to do that day.

“What do you mean? You love bird bingo,” Charles demanded, playing at ignorance of Erik’s burning and well-known hatred for the game.

Erik glared at him and was met with a smile Charles was trying to bite back.

“Those are your choices,” Charles announced, getting stubborn about it all of a sudden. “Either we can go swimming, play bird bingo, or you think up something.”

Some choices. Erik agonized over it briefly before he said, “Can’t we just hike around and _not_ play bird bingo?”

Charles pursed his lips which was better than an outright no, so Erik persisted. “Why don’t you show me the area you usually patrol?”

Patrol probably wasn’t the right word for it, but it got the general idea down. People like Charles were assigned different sections of the forest to keep an eye on and document changes in things like animal or plant population. They were sort of like field biologists, Erik thought, only they had some forest magic scattered around here and there to help them.

The suggestion seemed to appeal to Charles’s general desire to show Erik around the forest so he nodded. “Okay. Come on then.”

Charles stood and stretched and Erik forced himself not to look at the long, clean lines of his body when he did it. Instead, he stood as well and followed after Charles when he started off into the woods. It was a good day for a walk, not too hot or too cold when you were out of the sun. A light breeze rattled through the branches of the trees occasionally and some sunlight slipped through the blanket of green above them to help balance it out. Charles led them with certainty as he always did, picking the best path through the low-lying plants and vines. Erik stepped where he stepped. He couldn’t help but admire him in his element. It was during walks like these that Erik saw how completely Charles did look like he belonged in these woods, among the new life and soft light.

Charles pointed out a few highlights as they walked. There were lots of new bird nests and baby birds to go along with them. They even spotted a deer as they went along. She made to run off but paused when she saw them. Erik assumed it was Charles’s influence when she stayed where she was and went back to grazing.

“She’s pretty young,” Charles whispered to him conspiratorially. “Still has some white spots on her bum if you look.”

“Too young to have fawns?” Erik asked because he was still in a good mood after narrowly escaping the horrors of bird bingo. They’d just been seeing so many baby animals because of the season that it was on his mind.

“Probably,” Charles said, scrutinizing the doe. “She probably could, but I doubt she’d mate so soon.”

Erik decided he didn’t want to think any more about deer _mating_ than he had to so he nudged Charles along, kept him moving until they were a bit past the doe.

“There’s going to be a big to-do this weekend,” Charles said, seemingly out of nowhere which was how he brought up a new topic most of the time.

“For the deer?”

Charles shot him a look. “No, for my people.”

That was interesting. “Really? I didn’t think you guys had holidays. Are you just celebrating the springtime?”

“Sometimes we do,” Charles said, stepping over a fallen log. “But that’s not what this is. There’s going to be…well, I guess the best comparison would be a wedding.”

Erik’s eyebrows drew together. Charles hardly ever talked in specifics about the forest people or whatever they were—ten years of knowing him and Erik still couldn’t figure out the correct nomenclature. And Charles was no help—to the point where Erik suspected there was some rule about it, so he knew only the bare minimum about them. “You do that? The whole partners for life thing?” That seemed like an oddly….human custom for a bunch of woodland sprites to adopt.

Charles shrugged. “Some of us do. Some of us aren’t so keen on it, but some people like to make a big deal out of it, so they’re having some kind of ceremony. I guess I’m going to get dragged to it whether I want to go or not.”

“Did your parents do that?” Maybe a dangerous question. Charles had grown more and more distant from his parents the older he got and bringing them up could cause him to clam up like nothing else.

He took it pretty well that day. “God, no. If they had we’d probably have to instate some kind of divorce policy specifically for them.”

That was more than Erik had heard thus far, but he didn’t pursue it, curious as he might be. He went another direction with the conversation, one that had suddenly begun nagging at him. “If you guys can’t leave the forest and you do get married like that, how do you...” Erik didn’t really know how to put it without being offensive, so he just went for it. “How do you keep from having issues with inbreeding and so on?”

Charles laughed long and hard at that one. He was wheezing by the end of it. “That’s a question I never thought I’d hear you ask me.” They’d stopped walking while he gathered himself and started up again then. “But I guess it’s fair. Since you asked, I’ll give you the short version of it. We can’t actually have children. We’re more…borne of the forest.”

Erik fought back his dubious expression but it must have shown anyway. “I know it sounds like rubbish, but that’s the best way I can describe it.”

“So what, you just pop up like a plant one day? Are you the ones that started that rumor of babies coming from cabbage patches?” Erik demanded, not willing to let it go so easily. Potential incest avoided, that was still a big stretch for him to make mentally.

That made Charles laugh again. Erik admittedly liked to listen to him because he did it so easily and openly. “Is that what parents tell their children? I guess maybe that was our fault. I think it has more to do with trees actually, but as far as I can tell it just happens. You’ll have to accept that or we’ll never be able to move on.”

Erik rolled his eyes. “Fine. Pretend I believe you.”

“You’re impossible,” Charles complained. “You’ve been friends with a nymph-whatchamacallit for ten years. You’d think that your suspension of disbelief could be high enough to handle this.”

Erik cracked a smile at Charles’s choice of diction. “We can’t all believe everything we hear.”

Charles scowled at him, but kept on anyway. “The point is, we’re not related. Couples sometimes adopt the children or one person can do it. Someone has to, one way or another, to teach them how to be useful. So to answer your question, you needn’t worry. This may be the forest but we’re hardly all inbred.”

“You can’t blame me for wondering.”

“I guess not. It is fun to though.” Charles smiled at him blithely. Erik didn’t think it was fair that he could look so innocent when he so clearly wasn’t. “Alright. Your turn. You’ve heard the version of the Talk that I got. Let’s hear yours.”

Erik shoved him so hard he almost toppled him over.

Erik thought they’d put the subject to rest after Charles righted himself, still cackling—Erik couldn’t help but flush at the mere idea of that and it didn’t escape notice—and they’d moved on. They’d startled off all the animals that had been around them so they didn’t see much as they approached one edge of the forest. It was quieter as well.

But then Charles started talking again. “Will you get married someday?”

It threw Erik off because it was asked so casually. It wasn’t something he’d put much thought into anyway, too caught up in his present romantic plights. It wasn’t exactly a role he could see himself in. The last thing he wanted to do was settle down and start having babies. “I don’t know. I don’t think I want to.”

Charles hummed at that. “You might meet someone eventually. Yours is a much bigger sea than mine.”

Charles had a point there, but they were also stepping far too close to Erik’s actual feelings and it was making him nervous. “I guess.”

“Don’t sell yourself short!” Charles said, taking his short response the wrong way and making the anxiety in Erik’s chest that much more present. “You’re a bit ill-tempered and difficult, but you’re handsome and smart and tenacious. Someone’s bound to take to you eventually and they’ll be very lucky indeed.”

Erik knew he was being complimented—sort of—but it just made something inside his chest ache to hear Charles speak so objectively about it, like he wasn’t involved in it at all. Ironic, when to Erik he _was_ the whole picture, all there was, all there ever had been, at least at the moment. The only thing he could do was try to brush it off, act like he was above the whole business. “Shut up,” he grumbled.

That only seemed to confuse Charles. “What? I was being honest.”

Erik had had enough. “Just drop it already. Why are you so stuck on this all of a sudden? Something you want to tell me?”

That froze Charles inexplicably for a few seconds, but he was back in motion almost immediately after. “It was just something to talk about.”

Erik did his best to shove down his irritation. There was no reason to yell at Charles for something that wasn’t his fault, he knew that, but it was difficult. Charles had somehow managed to locate one of his weakest points and then had gone on to pick at it. “I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

Charles nodded. He tended to appreciate when Erik at least made an effort to tell him what he was thinking. “Alright,” he said, earlier energy subdued somewhat. “Let’s have a new subject. You pick it.”

Trying to fix the atmosphere between them, Erik suggested, “I could quiz you on plants.”

It was Charles’s turn to groan, although he seemed grateful that Erik had bounced back so quickly. “I should let you, but I’m saying genus and family names in my sleep already.”

Charles was supposed to memorize everything in the forest eventually and he’d been making Erik quiz him on it. He didn’t really have to do much, just point at a random plant. Charles either knew it or he didn’t. Erik supposed he didn’t mind helping. “I’m not going to let you off so easily. Come on, what’s that?” He pointed at something leafy and green—which described 90% of the plants in the forest—at random.

Charles sighed, slumping down dramatically and went to look at it more closely. He knelt down, taking its leaf in between two fingers. “Looks like some good old _Lycopodium clavatum.”_

“Sounds good to me.” Charles could be making up words for all he knew, but Erik let him get away with it.

They were in much better spirits by the time they looped back around to the river, completing Charles’s route. He’d been thoroughly quizzed on the plant life as well. It wasn’t as difficult in spring Erik didn’t think because everything was flowering. In the fall everything was just one color of green and the task seemed impossible. Neither of them had been taking it quite as seriously as usual because of that and probably because of the earlier bump in the conversation as well. Both of them were working to keep the mood light.

Erik had pointed at a deer at one point and Charles had stalled for about ten minutes pretending to not know what to call it. Charles also definitely began making up names at one point. Erik wasn’t sure when it had started but he caught on around “ _flowerium plantus_.”

Charles gave him “ _falsium responsus_ ” right as they reached the bank which was by far the worst one yet and Erik ended up pushing him into the river on a whim because of it. He went with a yelp, unable to stop himself, and landed gracelessly in the water. He popped back up a few seconds later, trying to look angry but not doing very well at it. His hair was plastered down to the sides of his face and he looked like one of those small dogs Erik had seen women carry around in their purses sometimes in the city.

Charles must have caught wind of the thought because he gasped. “Erik Lehnsherr, you take that back!”

Erik was so busy laughing that Charles yanked him in right after him with little to no trouble. He fell in about the same way and ended up just as soaked. He surfaced and immediately aimed a splash in Charles’s direction. The other boy just laughed and paddled away slightly before sending back a weak counterattack.

“Guess we went swimming after all,” he called and Erik fought the urge to roll his eyes since he’d all but asked for it, pushing Charles in first. He was unlikely to take something like that without some form of retaliation.

They didn’t stay in the water long because it really was a little too cool for it, at least to Erik. He clambered out a few minutes after they’d both toppled in and Charles followed after him. They ended up laid out in a patch of sunshine out in the middle of the clearing in an attempt to dry themselves off. They’d been walking around for a few hours at that point and the end of the day was approaching.

Days with Charles were always like that. The beginning was a bit stilted, could even drag on, but eventually the ball would get rolling and then all Erik had to do was blink and the day would be almost over. He’d never understand it. Talk of marriage notwithstanding, it’d been one of their better meet-ups in a while. Charles was sprawled out contentedly beside him, his face up to the sun and his eyes closed. He almost looked like he could be asleep.

“I don’t know why I let you talk me into doing that,” he commented suddenly, breaking apart Erik’s train of thought and causing him to rip his eyes away. “I have to walk the damn thing every day anyway without doing it twice.”

“It must be your pure, generous nature. What a burden to have to walk around for a couple of hours with your friend. They should call you Saint Charles.”

“Okay, okay,” Charles conceded. “Lay off.”

“I’m humbled to be in your presence, oh Holy One,” Erik continued anyway.

Charles nudged him with his foot. “That’s enough out of you. I was only kidding anyway. I don’t care what we do as long as we’re together.”

Erik winced at how sappy that was, although part of him could sympathize. It was probably the same damn part that yearned to just roll over and kiss Charles already, get it over and done with. The water had soaked his white shirt completely through so it was all but see-through, giving Erik a painfully clear view of the lean lines of his chest and the dusky points of his nipples. Each day he spent with Charles was also a sort of build-up, a slow accumulation of the number of times they touched or Charles leant up against him or said something like that or smiled at him. Each one weighed on Erik, pressing him down like a spring, built up the tension in his chest and the heat in skin, and one of these days he was sure he was going to snap.

It made it so he could only take so much before he had to go because he couldn’t take it any longer. He was certainly reaching his limit, but the day wasn’t over yet and he wasn’t ready to head home, so he decided to be a little reckless.

“It’s kind of late but I did bring lunch,” Erik said, changing the subject completely.

“It’s never too late for lunch.” Charles hefted himself up into a sitting position and leaned so he was looking down at Erik while he spoke.

Charles tilted the weight of his body onto his hand to accommodate the angle and ended up pressing his hand down right on top of Erik’s in the interim. His skin was soft and still a bit cool from the water, and Erik’s fingers twitched, wanting to curl between Charles’s. The other boy was lit up by the sun behind him as well, Erik noticed, his eyes bright and eager and his skin practically glowing from it.

It was a simple touch, surely accidental, but Erik knew how painfully telling the way heat rushed immediately into his cheeks from his chest was, how his first instinctive thought was about how easy it would be to tip Charles over on top of him so he could feel the weight of his body more completely, touch him in ways that weren’t hardly so chaste, finally taste that pretty red mouth of his, see if his lips were as soft as they looked—Erik cut the train of thought off desperately, willing the heat to dissipate from his face with a desperate urgency that was edged sharp with guilt and anxiety over being found out.

He snatched his hand back, severing the connection between them and displacing Charles’s balance some. Charles teetered, momentarily baffled, his mouth curling down at the edges, probably due to the abruptness with which Erik had moved, before he righted himself once more. He looked at Erik again, first at his retracted hand and then back into his eyes and raised his eyebrows.

Erik had to look away, but decided it would be best to just not comment, pretend it had all been thoughtless. “I’ll go get it then,” he announced to have something to say, speaking over the still rapid beating of his heart.

Charles didn’t mention it beyond the single, searching look and allowed Erik to fetch his bag. When he returned, the moment had passed and they began to eat without any great ceremony, Erik starting in on his sandwich while Charles went for the strawberries. Erik was grateful for the mundanity of it. It helped him to get his heart rate back down to something reasonable. He shoved the moment out of his mind for the time being as he did with any such incident, any coincidental intimacy between the two of them, gone for the moment but certain to pop back into his thoughts later for him to agonize over for far longer than could ever be necessary.

Still, that was a problem for another time. Presently, he just wanted to enjoy the meal and the quiet, uncomplicated companionship.

They ate in comfortable silence for a few minutes before Charles pointed at the sandwich. “Still?” he asked, incredulous.

Erik took another defiant bite of his chicken salad.

Charles was, somewhat obviously, a vegetarian. He always had been and so was everyone else like him as far as Erik could tell. When he was younger he couldn’t even stand being around meat which drove Erik somewhat crazy since he didn’t see what the big deal was. Now he didn’t seem to take much issue with it, but he tended to point it out and take a jab at Erik when he could.

It’d gotten worse because Raven was one too and now Erik felt completely surrounded. Raven was more vocal in her protests whereas Charles was quietly passive aggressive. He was hanging on, but he had a bad feeling he’d just end up converting someday out of exasperation. One could only take so much proselytizing in the name of vegetables.

“I think I’ll convince you someday,” Charles said, spearing another strawberry with a fork. “You’ll come over to the dark side.”

Erik shook his head. “If anyone’s going to do it, it’ll probably be Raven.”

Charles nodded as he chewed. “In that case, you’ll have to deliver her my thanks.”

“It’s not like there’s wild chickens out here to get offended anyway,” Erik argued for the sake of arguing it.

“Meat is meat,” Charles said matter-of-factly. Erik took another bite so he wouldn’t say anything. It was one of the more annoying phrases Charles repeated regularly. “Anyway, I can’t make you do anything. If I was going to leave you because of your dietary preferences I would have done it years ago.”

 _Leave you_. Like they were together. Erik wished Charles would watch his words more closely. Maybe he didn’t understand the implication. Sometimes he still tripped over nuances in idioms he heard from Erik but never quite came to comprehend. “Not all of us can survive on a diet of nuts and berries.”

Charles frowned and grabbed another strawberry, shoving it in Erik’s face. “Strawberries are good for you, Erik! I don’t know what you have against them.”

Erik winced and turned away. He didn’t much care for fruit, or at least ones like strawberries. He couldn’t stand the little seeds all over them. “This is why you’re not in charge of bringing lunch anymore.” (Charles’s normal diet really was heavily based in berries to the point where Erik figured they had to have different physiologies because no human could live that way. That was what he ate, so that was what he’d brought. Erik had not been very happy about it.)

Charles shrugged it off and retracted the strawberry. “Less work for me.”

They chattered on and off about nothing in particular as they finished up. It was still early enough in the year that the days weren’t stretched out long, meaning the sun was already beginning to dip down, almost close enough to touch the very tops of the trees. The forest was coming alive in anticipation of the cooler temperatures of the night. Erik knew he would need to leave soon. He hadn’t dressed for the still-chilly nights and his mother would want him back.

He told Charles as much.

Charles nodded, keeping his face mostly neutral, though disappointment was clear in his eyes. Sometimes when he was much younger, he used to cry when Erik left for the day, Erik remembered suddenly.

Charles caught onto the memory and smiled a little, just a slight curve of his lips. (Strawberries had been a terrible idea. All they’d done was stain Charles’s mouth a brighter scarlet color. Worse, when he noticed, he’d just gone and licked it off rather than use a napkin.) “You broke my little heart every time you left. I didn’t know if you’d ever come back and I couldn’t follow after you. It drove my parents up a wall because I was always in a terrible mood all night.”

Erik couldn’t help but feel a little guilty at having made little Charles cry, but he tried to push beyond it quickly. “It wasn’t like I could stay out here all night.”

“I know,” Charles said. “But I didn’t understand why not at the time.”

Erik wasn’t sure he liked how the subject was hovering around the idea of him leaving and Charles’s reaction to it, so he stood and went to gather his things together rather than keep talking. He flipped his bag closed before he realized Charles had moved to sit closer to him, as near as he had been when they’d been sitting together earlier. It surprised Erik, and he made to move away, but Charles was giving him a strange, scrutinizing look that froze him. Erik met his eyes against his better judgement, tried not to drown in the blue of them.

Charles’s eyebrows pulled together. “Is everything okay?” he asked, his voice soft.

Erik blinked and yanked his eyes away, not prepared for the question or how low and gentle Charles’s voice was. He let himself fall back so he was sitting properly and not kneeling. It was something about the question and the fact that he didn’t really have an answer for it, or at least not the answer Charles probably wanted to hear that made him feel as though something heavy was pressing down on his chest. He swallowed and tried to keep his face in check.

“Of course,” he forced out. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” Charles sounded less confident than he normally did, hesitant in a way he wasn’t usually nowadays. It made the force on Erik’s chest that much more unbearable. “It seems like something’s…off recently. Erik, you won’t even look at me.”

Erik forced himself to look back, away from the safety of the river, turning dark and opaque in the dying light of the day, back to Charles. It was a bad decision. Charles’s gaze was searing, open and worried. Any shields that had been up had fallen. The bravado was gone and there was only his friend, sitting there looking like he was even afraid to ask, but was doing it anyway. The honest concern in his expression was painful. And he did look scared, but he was still there, still facing Erik, looking for answers that would probably end up hurting him.

Erik thought about telling him, but he didn’t think he could bear it. He didn’t want to see that familiar face twisted in rejection or politely cool dismissal. He didn’t want to see it crumple if he told Charles about his contradictory, yet overpowering feeling of being trapped, of longing to escape this dead-end small town. It was cowardly of him, he knew, but he just couldn’t.

So he turned away again. “It’s fine, Charles. Nothing’s wrong.”

Erik could almost feel the doubt radiating off of Charles to the point where he thought the other boy might be projecting it at him, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw Charles give a small nod. “If you say so. It’s just…it’ll be a while until I see you again, so I had to ask. I’m sorry I didn’t mean to…” He trailed off, not finishing the sentence, but Erik thought he understood.

“It’s okay,” he said, turning back. It looked like Charles was willing to keep up their charade for a while longer, willing to work to keep everything calm on the surface and look past the chaos underneath. “Don’t worry about it.”

Erik noticed the book still lying near his bag and he reached to hand it to Charles again. “Here.”

Charles took it and clutched it close to himself. “Thank you.”

Erik had to leave. He couldn’t stand it any longer. He’d reached his breaking point and just kept on pushing anyway. The previous bit of the conversation still hung heavy on him, suffocating him. The air around them was full to bursting with things left unsaid, and they were getting stuck in Erik’s throat. “I’ll see you in about a half a month or so. Good luck with the wedding thing.”

Charles didn’t reply. He was still just looking at him. Erik shifted uncomfortably. There was something in Charles’s eyes that he didn’t know how to interpret, so he dropped his eyes back down and away. He moved to stand and go, clutching at the strap of his bag so his hands wouldn’t shake so obviously, but Charles suddenly broke out of his silence.

“Wait,” he called, catching one of Erik’s wrists and yanking him back.

Erik went, dropping back down to the ground. Charles released him immediately, but his skin still burned in a ring around where he’d gripped. Erik raised his eyebrows in question.

Charles gave him a sheepish smile, but it was hiding more nerves. It wasn’t easy like most of his smiles were. Erik wondered if Charles was going to say something after all, but he didn’t. “I almost forgot. I had something to give you too.”

That threw Erik for a loop. It was about the last thing he’d expected Charles to say, but he was glad for the sudden change of pace. He couldn’t imagine what Charles had for him however. “Oh. You didn’t have to.”

“I know,” Charles said. “But you’re always bringing me things so I felt bad. Besides, I don’t know if you’ll like it or not.” He was choosing his words carefully, Erik noticed, and fiddling with his hands like he did when he was anxious.

Erik hoped he hadn’t gone and done something ostentatious. Charles probably knew Erik better than that, but sometimes his enthusiasm got the better of him. “I’m sure I will,” he said to try to appease him some.

Charles took a deep breath in and out, setting his jaw and getting that determined look in his eyes he had sometimes when Erik presented him a math problem back when he was trying to seriously to tutor him. “Close your eyes.”

Erik frowned. “Why do I have to—?”

“Please?” Charles asked, voice softer again, gently entreating. “Just a second.”

Erik sighed. That didn’t necessarily bode well, but he did as he was told.

Erik waited, although he didn’t know what for. Presumably for Charles to tell him to open his eyes. Erik figured he’d had to run off somewhere and grab whatever it was that he had and that was what was taking time. He did hear some rustling, but then it was quiet again. He was tempted to peek, not a fan of the anticipation that was building up behind all of this, but he resisted.

Finally he heard Charles let out another tiny breath and, suddenly, there was a warm, soft pressure up against his lips. It was gone as soon as it had appeared and Erik was so shocked he hardly registered what had happened. He did blink his eyes open, unable to keep them shut any longer, and tried to reorient himself. It had been the slightest brush, the sweetest friction, but it had completely shattered any intelligent train of thought he’d had, mostly because he wasn’t at all prepared for it.

Erik thought he might have imagined it, but when he finally got up the nerve to fix his eyes on Charles, the other boy was flushed bright red and was avoiding his eyes. He’d brought a hand up to press his first two fingers up against his lips, and that about proved it.

Charles had kissed him.

Erik’s heart fell all over itself as it sank in, and the weight that had been on his chest before suddenly lifted up and off. It didn’t help him feel any less like he was going to burst however, since the pressure down was replaced by a violent expansion, like someone was pumping him full of helium. He didn’t know how to react to any of it, so incredulous was he at the sharp turn the afternoon had taken.

Charles looked about as shocked as he did which wasn’t really fair. The calm sea between them was no more. Charles had jumped into it headfirst, leaving whitecaps in his wake. Moreover, Erik couldn’t help but want to jump right in after him.

Still, it was hard for Erik to think about anything other than very simple details at the moment. Heat crept up the sides of his face and he gripped hard at the ground on either side of him to keep himself grounded. Charles had kissed him. No one had ever kissed Erik before.

“I’m sorry,” Charles said, pulling Erik back out of his head and into the present moment. He’d dropped his hands into his lap and had scuttled away from Erik by a few feet. “I couldn’t help myself any longer. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I probably should have asked first, but it took me forever to work up the courage to even try so asking was sort of out of the question. I’ve wanted to for a while, but I didn’t know—or I mean, I didn’t want to…” Charles trailed off from his rambling, pressing his lips together. He flicked his eyes up, probably gaging Erik’s reaction.

Erik had no idea what he looked like at the moment. Probably still flabbergasted. His mind was slow to work, but he forced it into motion, tried to formulate some kind of response. Honesty terrified him still, but it was a little easier now that Charles had taken the first step. He didn’t have the brainpower to come up with anything else. “Me too,” he said, then hurried to contextualize it. “I mean, not that I didn’t want to. I did. I’ve wanted to…for a while now. Kiss you I mean.” It’d been some time since Erik had fumbled so much trying to say something so simple.

Clunky as it was, it seemed to get his point across. Charles’s face lit up and the wave of affection that rolled over Erik because of it was completely disarming. “Really?”

Erik nodded, not trusting his voice anymore.

Charles inched back closer to him a little bit and for once Erik didn’t pull away. “I’m so glad. I didn’t want to ruin anything, but it was killing me not to do something about it. I couldn’t let you leave again today without getting it out there.” He bit at his lip for a second and then continued. “It’ll probably sound silly, but I really like you, Erik. I mean, I always have but I don’t only want to be your friend forever.”

Charles was pulling at his fingers again and Erik decided to be brave. He reached out and stopped him from worrying at them with his own hands, taking Charles’s between his own. His hands were as soft as Erik had thought they would be from the brief, earlier contact, but warmer than before. Erik squeezed at them, marveling at his ability to do so. “I know what you mean,” he said. “I was scared to say anything.” It was nice to at least admit it.

“Don’t be,” Charles reprimanded him, warmth and amusement creeping back into his voice. “Don’t ever be scared to tell me anything.”

Erik didn’t think Charles knew what he was talking about so he leaned forward to kiss him again and keep him from saying anything else. The kiss remained chaste, but it lasted longer. Erik pressed up against Charles, loosed one of his hands so he could cup at Charles’s face. His skin was still warm from the sun.

Erik longed to just stay where he was forever, content to be in Charles’s space, near enough to feel the warmth of his body, but he eventually pulled back to breathe. Charles chased after him anyway, not allowing them to part for even three seconds. It was more of a brush, like the first one and Charles pulled back afterward, laughing a little. Giddiness was bubbling up inside of Erik so he laughed along with him.

Charles moved to wrap his arms around Erik’s neck, looping them together properly. Erik kissed him again and again and again, little, quick ones. Charles laughed through it and Erik had never felt so light. Charles turned his head to nose up against Erik’s cheek.

“Here,” he said, his voice right next to Erik’s ear. “Sit cross legged.” Charles pulled back, ignoring Erik’s attempts to stop him and waited until Erik obeyed. Then he came back and climbed into his lap, kneeling over top of him, and Erik stopped breathing.

They were much closer like this, chest-to-chest. The proximity stoked the heat inside of Erik, causing it to catch fire. Charles put his arms back and smirked down at Erik. The cockiness that melted away before was back, but Erik didn’t mind. He did feel a little like someone had accidentally flipped fast-forward on everything that was happening, but it was beyond him to stop at that point.

He tilted his chin up to reconnect their lips and this time Charles opened his mouth. A hot spike of desperation sliced through Erik and bled into the kiss because of it. Erik didn’t really know what to do but he pressed back urgently against Charles. It was gratifying to feel Charles do the same. Erik got sick of not doing anything with his hands so he ran them down Charles’s sides and held onto to his waist.

Charles squirmed in response to the movement and pressed up against him further. Charles was sort of heavy, but Erik found he didn’t mind the solid weight in his lap. All the waiting and worry and longing Erik had suffered for the past who-knew-how-long he poured into the kiss. He squeezed at Charles’s hips, still slightly in disbelief that he had him, that this was happening.

Erik lost track of time. He had no idea how long they spent like that. His brain just melted and became completely useless. The only tell was the day stretching on, the sun dipping down, and the arrival of the night which became visible when Charles finally pulled back. They stayed close with Charles pressing their foreheads together and all but panting into his mouth, but Erik didn’t really mind it.

Abruptly, Charles shifted, moved so he was pressing his face into Erik’s neck. He moved his arms as well, pulling until they were in a more proper embrace. Charles dug his fingers into his shirt, held on tight. Erik held him close as well. The two of them caught their breath for a minute, let the silence of the night distill the heated haze that had surrounded them for some time.

“I still don’t ever want you to leave,” Charles confessed in a whisper all of a sudden. He said it like he was scared for Erik to hear but desperate for him to know, and Erik saw why. “I know you have to, but I hate it. I love you, Erik. I’ve always loved you, and I never want to be without you.”

Erik squeezed Charles tighter, held on for dear life. He couldn’t help his sharp intake of breath. He didn’t understand how Charles could say it so easily. Erik thought he should be happy to hear it, but all the statement had done was reveal the anxiety underneath everything. The monumental nature of the declaration and everything that it meant for them terrified Erik. Where before he was unable to see the larger picture, it now felt like he was zoomed all the way out and was stuck that way, unable to focus in on the present moment. The words drug him back into the reality and all the technicalities of the situation, every other reason he’d kept from telling Charles exactly that other than simple fear of rejection.

Erik knew he couldn’t give Charles what he wanted. He knew it deep down inside himself. This was a tie, a chain, and it was a lovely one, but he would fight it. He wouldn’t be able to help it. He’d only just gotten hold of what he’d wanted, but even now Erik knew that it couldn’t last. In the same breath he could see the beginning and the end. He’d jumped in and immediately he was drowning.

Dread grounded him, swirling icy and foreboding in his stomach. The day had ended, the color fading out, and left only the dark, cold of the night. Erik detached Charles gently and kissed him again, kissed him and kissed him like it was the only time he’d ever be able to. It was the best he could do, the most he could give. Charles had given him so much, so it seemed pitiful to Erik that this was all he had. Charles must have taken it for passion because he smiled into them.

Erik pulled back and held Charles still when he tried to follow. He attempted a smile, but didn’t know how well it worked. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I probably need to head back.”

Charles shook himself and nodded. “Of course. I didn’t mean to keep you so long.” He climbed off of Erik unsteadily, not quite in control of his legs yet. Erik was much the same, but he forced himself to stand on his own, taking his bag and slinging it up over his shoulder.

He almost broke down and confessed when he looked back at Charles who was just standing there, looking at him, smiling that trusting smile. It took everything in him to force a smile and give a simple, “Goodnight, Charles.”

Something flashed across Charles’s face and Erik worried it might be recognition. The new distance between them suddenly felt incredibly tangible, wide and expanding the longer it was left alone. Erik wished that he’d been less selfish, that he’d accepted the truth before all of this had been handed him on a silver platter, but there was something about it being real that allowed him to finally make his choice. Before it had been a dream. He could pretend it wasn’t there, avoid it, ignore it, and he could do the same with all the other anxieties that had come attached to it. But now they were unavoidable and he knew exactly how this was going to play out.

It would be his fault, his choice. But he couldn’t live with himself any other way. The small part of himself that wanted to throw itself down at Charles’s knees and tell him everything hated him for it.

Ultimately, Charles didn’t say anything. If he knew, he didn’t draw attention to it. Instead he smiled that sweet, loving smile at Erik and said, “Goodnight, Erik” and he let him go. That somehow made it worse.

Erik turned and went anyway, walked off through the forest, out onto the road, back toward his house. He stepped beyond the safe, familiar bounds of his childhood and hardened his heart so he wouldn’t turn and look back.


	4. Twenty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the shorter chapter, but I needed something to bridge the previous one and the one after this. It's more of a time-skip than anything else, but it was necessary. Because of that I am just sort of throwing it up to get it out there.
> 
> I'm also sorry if any of the details concerning home ownership/selling are inaccurate. Being a millennial and therefore having spent all my money on avocado toast, I have little experience in the area, so I just did my best to gloss over it but get the general ideas down.

-20-

Erik’s life came to an unanticipated pause halfway through his third year of college.

He’d graduated high school and ended up moving to New York to go to school. He picked up scholarships where he could and took out loans to the pay the rest. He was studying engineering in the hopes of getting a job that was stable and could be found just about anywhere, and it was going well. He liked school when he got to choose what he was learning about.

He was proud of himself in a way he usually wasn’t for having gotten there at all. As soon as he’d started talking about it he’d heard about a hundred discouraging voices, telling him to pick somewhere more realistic if he had to go, but he’d ignored them and it had paid off. It had been difficult, but he’d freed himself from the prison of his small hometown. Once he was in college he felt he finally had room to grow and learn more about himself in a way he thought he might never have been able to had he stayed. All in all, he thought it was one of the best decisions he’d ever made for him, future financial consequences be damned.

Raven had followed him for some reason, claiming there were better art schools in America, and he didn’t mind it. She’d wanted to get out as much as him and having a support system when he was already so far away from home was useful even if he didn’t like to admit it. They worked four jobs between the two of them and lived together in the tiniest apartment Erik had ever seen because that was what they could afford. Erik didn’t care. The inside space they had was less important the space around them, the endless sprawl of the city, the lights, and the open roads. Thousands of people and thousands of places and no dirt roads in sight.

Because of their living situation, she was the one to tell him. He’d left his phone in the apartment accidentally and she’d picked it up when she saw the number. When he got home that day, she was sitting in their one chair, a sober look on her face like he’d never seen before.

Erik’s mother was sick. It was bound to happen eventually and he’d noticed the decline in her health during their periodic calls. She’d just worked too hard for too long and it was too much for her. She was hardly young either. She’d had Erik rather late in her life. Erik’s father had been younger than her.

Still, it was a punch to the gut. He wallowed in guilt for all of one night before he started making calls and booking flights back to England. He’d probably have to repeat a semester of school, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to be absent for the death of another parent.

Erik’s mother cried when she saw him and he knew he’d done the right thing coming all the way back. The next few months were a flurry of calculating estate values and looking at nursing homes and hospital visits. Erik didn’t want her living all on her own out in the middle of nowhere anymore. (Gal had passed away just before Erik graduated high school which had been hard for both of them, even if it was inevitable. The house had felt impossibly empty without her unending energy to fill it.) She was still attached to the farmhouse, but it was too large for her, too much work even if the neighbors chipped in.

Hers was a quiet kind of sickness, one that didn’t require beeping machines and a million tubes as his father’s had. It was better and worse. The doctors told him there wasn’t much to be done and his mother, stubborn as always, told him that she’d rather just go naturally, when it was her time. Erik respected that, though it hurt to think that there might be something that could be done.

Eventually they got her moved to a nice nursing home in a suburb outside the city nearest their house. The people there were friendly and let Erik hang around because watching other people do something that was really his job bothered him. Within four months of the call, her mind started to go. Erik had to remind her daily who he was and what was happening. Once she was told, she was always excited to see him, making him think that the memories weren’t gone, just faded. That made it a little easier.

He went back a couple of times to the house to fetch pictures for her or blankets, anything she might want, but he tried to spend as little time as possible there. His ghosts were too many in that place for it to be comfortable anymore.

Early in the fifth month she passed away in her sleep. Erik had thought that maybe the death of a loved one so early in his life would make it easier to get through the second, but he was sorely mistaken. One of the nurses had to pull him away from her bedside, out into the hallway to collect himself. For so long it’d only been him and his mother against the world, working to keep each other alive and in good spirits. Leaving her had been the hardest when he’d gone off to school and he spent tireless hours teaching her how to use Skype because of it so he could see her, make sure she was okay while he was gone.

She’d been so strong for him and done so much. He never could have repaid her. He wasn’t a practicing Jew, hadn’t been for years, but his mother always had been, and he hoped that she was in whatever better place it was that she believed in. If anyone deserved it, it was her.

It was more bureaucracy after that. Lots of papers to sign and things to arrange. Erik never understood why funerals were so expensive. It seemed a lot like a kick in the ass when you were already sore. The people in the town came because they knew her about as well as him and had loved her just the same. Erik minded their presence less than he thought he might. Final goodbyes were bid and Erik was left only with the gaping space in his chest which he knew from experience would take a while to patch up.

The only thing left was the house. His mother had had some money saved away and that had transferred over to him upon her request. It wasn’t much, but it was impressive considering the conditions they’d lived in for so long. She’d left him the house as well, and now he was being made to deal with it.

Raven flew in for a while during the summer and helped him sort through everything, saving anything important—he rescued his father’s chess set from the closet he’d put it in when he’d left for university for example—and setting up an estate sale for the rest of it. Anything left they donated or threw out. Then there was only the empty house left. Raven ended up having to fly back after a couple weeks for work reasons, leaving Erik alone again.

It wasn’t sweltering out quite yet, but it was getting there. The beginning of the summer was a slow build in heat until it became unbearable and the house had no air conditioning, never had. Erik walked around it, battling through the heat, surprised by how nostalgic he still felt for the place.

He could see the forest out some of the windows, even if he tried not to look. That was another weight on him. Even being nearby was unsettling for reasons he didn’t like to think about. He’d never gone back after that one day. It’d hurt to stay away, hurt deep inside of him, throbbing, hemorrhaging in a way that he couldn’t control. But he’d stayed firm, tried to put it out of his mind.

He’d come too far to turn back now anyway. Familial ties were one thing, but to be chained inextricably to a place was something he couldn’t stand. He’d heard enough stories about his grandparents and their hardships to know that he was never going to allow himself to be fenced in, caged. He’d had to leave, to get away in the same way he needed to breathe, even if it wasn’t easy. And he’d gone. There was nothing else to it.

Erik tried not think about it much which made him that much more eager to get the process over with. He thought he’d just let the bank have it. It felt a little cheap, but he didn’t have time or funds to manage a realtor from another country. He’d done what he could for his mother and now he had to go back, to start classes again, try and make up what he’d missed. The forest loomed behind him, but he kept his back to it, kept looking ahead.

By late July it was done. The house was off his hands and he was free to go back to New York. He pushed the stake he’d been given into the ground announcing the availability of the space and the bank’s ownership of it. The idea still left something of a bad taste in his mouth, but he swallowed around it. This was the easiest way to be rid of it.

Erik took one last look at the place that had housed the majority of his childhood, sized it up. Part of him was sad to think he’d never see it again, but that was the same part that kept pointing out that that hadn’t been the _real_ home of his childhood, so he forced it into silence.

He took a deep breath. The air was still fresh there. He’d always liked that at least about this place, liked the open sky and endlessly green summers. He could allow himself to miss that much at least. The rest was just a chapter of his life that was finally over, complete down the last comma, and better left undisturbed. In many ways it was a relief.

So Erik unlocked his rental car and climbed in, turning around and heading back to the airport. He ignored the trees whipping past in his rear view mirror the best he could and kept driving.


	5. Twenty-Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Big One. And at last we earn the rating (*・∀-)☆

-25-

Erik got lost on his way back.

It’d been too long and the path he used to trod down constantly had become overgrown with long bending weeds and stubborn yellowing grass. Even finding the beginning had been a trial, more of a guess than anything else. Eventually he’d just pulled off the dirt road at random, parked, and hoped for the best. He stumbled around the forest afterward for at least half an hour getting back on track. Most of the sun was blocked by the canopy of green above him but the rays that did slip through were suffocating, the crowd of trunks holding in the humidity like nothing else.

Erik considered himself in shape. He exercised regularly and he enjoyed it. Even living in a city as he did now, he could run or find a gym if he wanted to go to the extra effort of that. Still, he was sweating buckets in the heat. It was mid-August, maybe the worst time he could have picked but it hadn’t been a perfectly planned out decision. In fact, it hadn’t been planned at all.

One day, he just couldn’t stand staying away any longer. He lived generally unattached to anyone or anything, but his roots were still here in spite of everything. He couldn’t deny it any longer. He’d ripped most of them up the best he could, but some ran too deep to ever be extricated, at least not without killing himself first. He hadn’t been able to admit it when he was younger, but now he saw the truth and was being forced to deal with it.

Ten years. It’d been ten years since he’d been back to this place. He’d thought it might still feel familiar, that he might recognize everything, but that wasn’t true. The forest had grown on without him and it was an alien land. He did remember how hot it could get, but he didn’t remember how silent everything went. It was too hot for even the birds to bother singing to each other. He didn’t remember where the path in was. He didn’t remember how to find the river. He didn’t remember.

It was eerie, made him ache strangely with shame that something once so close to his heart had become foreign to him. He wondered if he should have come back at all.

But no. He had to. Staying away was eating him alive. It hadn’t hit him until he’d had time to slow down. He’d gotten through college, got his degree, got a job, bought an apartment, threw his life into gear as best he could in spite of any setbacks. He had loans to pay off now, as well as rent, neighbors and a commute and a salary and a landlord. He’d grown up the best he could. He didn’t know how long he’d stay where he was currently. Erik had discovered that moving around often suited him. He liked to see the world, didn’t like to be chained to anything.

The years had flown by, and then one morning he’d woke up and the weight of it all had hit him directly in the chest. He wasn’t worn out, per se, but everything he’d locked up in the back of his mind hadn’t slowly faded with time as he’d hoped it would. It was still there and he was through letting it collect dust. He needed to toss it out for good or come to terms with it.

It was an intimidating task, but he knew he’d be better off when it was done. So he’d requested a few days off—easy: he never took time off so his vacation day build-up was impressive—booked a plane ticket, packed his bags, and set off, simple as anything. Now here he was, staring his childhood in the face.

Well, really he was tripping all over it, getting his feet caught in the underbrush and desperately trying to listen for the sound of the river to guide him and drowning in his own sweat. The one thing the city didn’t have was easy access to a forest so he didn’t often have the chance to go hiking and his inexperience was showing. If anyone else was around, he thought he’d be embarrassed.

It occurred to him that he didn’t have to go back here. He could have stayed home to think things out, gone to Paris or San Francisco or Tokyo, some normal vacation spot. But it wouldn’t have been the same. He’d needed to come here because so much of what he’d set aside was there.

And he knew that it wasn’t just the forest he was talking about, but he wasn’t ready to tread down that particular path quite yet.

Erik didn’t believe in many superstitions, but he thought there was a value to gut feelings and now that he was there, in spite of the unfavorable conditions, he knew he’d done the right thing. Besides, the closer he got to the river, the more bearable the temperature became. Once he was able to hear it, making his way over wasn’t too difficult. He all but fell out of the brush into the open space in front of the river once he located it.

He righted himself, regaining his balance and glanced around. The nostalgia that had been absent before hit him hard in the stomach and he clenched his teeth to brace against it. The river broke the simmering silence of the trees, burbled along, not needing any wind to speak. The shadow of the forest stretched out long in front of him. It’d be chased back as the day crept on, but for now it was shielding. The air was sweet and he felt as though he’d entered some completely different world, the same as he had the first time he’d found this place.

Erik sighed, exhausted from his trek, and sank down in the grass, setting his bag to the side. The river looked incredibly inviting. It might not be as cool as it was in the spring, but it would be better than nothing. The water was clear enough that he could see how little of it there was. The heat apparently had chased the better part of it back up into the sky.

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to happen, but it was nothing spectacular. He was glad to have finally found the damn place, grateful for the shade and the cooling effect of water, but he felt detached from it all somehow. Maybe that was because there was a very obvious piece of picture missing. Erik glanced around surreptitiously, but the space was open and empty aside from himself.

Slowly, he allowed himself to touch memories he’d skirted around for a decade. Parts of them were blurry, but Charles was still very clear. Erik remembered how he used to emerge from the forest or come running up mere minutes after Erik arrived like clockwork. He’d never missed a day, never left Erik alone for more than a half hour at the longest. He seemed to materialize from the air, coalescing into messy curls and wide, bright eyes and planes of pale skin dappled with an endless supply of freckles right in front of Erik, always bringing along with him a too-big smile and a chipper greeting.

Not that day. Charles was nowhere to be found.

Erik shoved away the ache that came with that realization. He felt foolish to have expected such a thing. Erik hadn’t come back for ten whole years. Charles was surely still somewhere within the forest, but there was no reason for him to show himself, to waste his time.

Guilt stepped in, pressing up against him, cloying and encompassing. Erik tried to shake it off. What was he supposed to do? Keep coming back here throughout college? Stay in this clearing forever? This was a fairytale. It always had been. It was a dream, and it was lovely, but fitting it into his day-to-day reality would have been impossible. He’d had to move on for his own good, even if that meant leaving Charles behind, which he had done. He admitted that to himself now. He’d left. He’d made his choice without much explanation and then gone, cut it off at the neck, maybe at the worst possible time.

He wondered if he’d hurt Charles, if he’d come looking for him. How long had he tried until he finally gave up and left to wherever he was now? He probably had tried, at least for a while. Charles as he’d known him had been fairly emotional and not afraid to show his attachment to people or things. He was sentimental, and kind, and naïve. Erik wondered if his betrayal had been a wake-up call. Maybe it’d been for the best.

He was quick to shake that thought away. He wasn’t going to pretend like he’d done what he did for Charles’s sake. It’d been entirely selfish, driven by self-preservation and fear of how he felt. It seemed like the action of a completely different person, but Erik could still sympathize. Now he hoped he’d be brave enough to tell someone before he stepped out of their life if they’d been connected as he and Charles had been. Still, it was easier said than done. Silence was simple. Slow disintegration was always preferable to a violent, if quick break.

It wasn’t like he’d been completely above it, that he hadn’t felt anything. The year following he’d been tempted again and again to come back. He missed Charles in the same way he thought he’d miss his arm if someone decided to chop it off. He’d longed to see him one last time, to hear him laugh, to hold him or kiss him just once more, say all the things he hadn’t been courageous enough to say that night. And that was why he’d stayed away. It was too much and it couldn’t last. It wasn’t real to anyone but him.

And if he’d generally stayed away from dating since then, that was more because he didn’t see much use in it than anything else. He’d sustained a few flings, but they seemed destined to die as soon as they were labelled each time. Friendship suited him better and even that came difficult to him most of the time. He had a habit of shattering things as soon as they showed any possibility of breaking, before they could do it on their own and catch him off guard. Raven told him it wasn’t healthy, and the older he got the more he saw her point, but it was a difficult habit to break.

It’d started with Charles, had all started here, that dark night when he’d walked off and never came back. He’d set the design for a pattern then and had followed it well since.

It was a wonder then that some part of him had so desperately wanted to find Charles there in spite of how illogical it was. He hadn’t gotten rid of him completely. He still occupied some small corner of Erik’s mind to that day.

But he wasn’t there and more than likely he wasn’t going to show up. Erik dug his fingers into the grass on either side of him and drug his eyes away from the river, deciding he should eat the lunch he’d packed, drink some water. When he checked his phone he found he had absolutely no signal and that it was mid-afternoon already. He tossed it aside and dug out the book he’d brought. If this was all he’d come to see, a little stream and some trees, he’d best make it worth his while.

Erik sat reading for a long time. Time still didn’t seem to work right in the clearing. Hours dripped by without him noticing. Only the movement of the sun showed it and the gradually cooling temperature of the air. Erik didn’t generally do well sitting still for long periods of time, but the book kept his mind occupied and that was enough for him for the time being. There was something to be said for getting away from technology. He knew well enough about catharsis, but he didn’t think he’d really experienced it before then.

That was enough for him, he told himself. That could be enough to put this particular ghost to rest.

The sun was still high in the sky at 5 PM when he decided he ought to head back. He needed to get to his hotel, eat some dinner, figure out what he was going to do next anyway. He wanted to visit his parents’ graves at some point and that would take some preparation to handle. He packed up, zipping his bag back up, before he decided to walk down to the river after all. He pulled off his socks and shoes and followed the gentle slope of the bank down to the shore.

He stepped in without much ceremony. The water was cool, but not freezing. It would be nice to swim in. The stones were smooth under his feet and the water curled easily around the blockade of his legs, not paying him any mind. He bent to run his fingers along the sparkling edge of the water. It was about the same temperature, Erik thought, as it had been the day he’d left when he and Charles had pulled each other in.

That was when he heard the rustling. He snapped to attention, flipping around. He couldn’t imagine who the hell else would be stupid enough to stumble out this far accidentally. He could barely accomplish it when he was trying. When he saw, he about fell over into the river.

The figure stayed tucked in along the tree line, hesitating. He met blue eyes, wide and wary, for a long moment, attracted like a magnet. Finally, Charles stepped forward, out into the sunlight. His steps were careful and he didn’t stray closer to Erik, kept his distance.

He didn’t look a great deal older, but his hair was longer and there was some scruff better outlining the previously soft lines of his face. He was still freckle-spattered as he always had been in the summer. They poured over the edge of his bare shoulders, and some crept down along his arms. He was barefoot as well which wasn’t uncommon if Erik remembered correctly. His trousers were brown and rolled up to his knees clumsily, looking more like they’d been shoved than folded. He looked for all the world like he’d just stumbled out of a performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

“Erik…?” Charles ventured. His voice was quiet, careful, unsure.

“Charles,” Erik replied when he could get his voice to work. He had no idea what he was feeling. Too much because it was overwhelming and he couldn’t focus on any one thing. Mostly he was shocked.

“What are you doing here?” Charles asked after a moment of pause. His eyes were searching now, sweeping over Erik. Erik didn’t know that he’d find what he was looking for.

There was no simple answer to that. “I could ask you the same question.”

Wrong answer. That drew a frown out of Charles. It wrinkled his forehead, cast his still-too-red mouth in an ugly shape. “What do you mean? Where else would I be? You’re the one who disappeared out of the blue and never came back one day.”

It was hard to argue with that. “I just thought…” _That you’d move on too?_ Erik didn’t know how to finish his sentence.

Charles cocked an eyebrow at him and the stretch of the expression helped him to look more like himself. “Yes? What did you think?”

Erik knew he needed to be careful with his answer but it was difficult to focus when Charles was right there in front of him after so long. It felt like a dream and it chased any intelligent reply right out of his head. He felt like he was a fifteen year old boy who’d just been kissed for the first time all over again. “I thought I wouldn’t see you,” Erik finally completed the thought.

“Sorry to disappoint.” The response was immediate, biting. Erik rarely saw Charles cold like this, or he hadn’t when they’d seen each other regularly. Everything about his posture was guarded now. His arms were folded across his chest, his back was straight, his chin was up. It hurt to see him like that, even if Erik understood.

“That’s not what I meant,” Erik defended, climbing carefully out of the river since he felt silly standing there as he had been. Charles’s eyes tracked his movements carefully. Erik wasn’t sure what he’d expected. It was completely possible that Charles was angry with him for showing his face again here so thoughtlessly after so long.

Erik supposed he had a right to be angry. There was more to it than that, a pain in his eyes that Erik could see even from the distance. Erik dropped his head, looked down at the grass, wondered what to say. He’d thought about it some before but after it seemed like Charles wasn’t coming, he’d let the idea go. It wasn’t like he’d gotten very far in the first place. It was difficult because coming there had been a spur-of-the-moment choice, one he’d made in a second, but one that affected something very complicated and important.

The silence stretched between them for a few long, uncomfortable moments when Erik felt only the burn of the relentless sun on his skin from above and focused too much on the movement of the grass under his feet. Finally, Charles sighed.

He’d dropped his arms down by his sides. His gaze was piercing and Erik was certain he was looking right through him. “Why did you come back?” he asked and there was an edge of genuine curiosity to the statement.

Erik tried for honesty, tried to form everything that was tearing him up inside and had been for a decade into a concrete thought. “I had to. I took the weekend off to come back here and…sort things out.”

Charles squinted at him. “Weekend off?”

“From my job,” Erik elaborated. “I live a long ways from here now. I took a plane back and drove out here.”

Charles seemed to be parsing that. It stood to reason that if Erik had been gone for a decade then Charles hadn’t had outside contact since then either. It wasn’t like they’d talked much about jobs when they were kids or anything that came with it. “Why didn’t you come back before now? If you had to, why’d you stay away for so long?”

Erik chanced a couple of steps closer to him. The distance between them was suffocating, constant like nothing else from when he’d first put it there. Luckily, Charles didn’t back away, just stood his ground. These were all the same questions he’d been asking himself, none of which he had great answers for. “I don’t know. It was easier to stay away for good, I guess. If I’d come back, I think I’d probably have wanted to stay.”

He kept moving closer to Charles, drawn to him helplessly. He thought time and distance might do something to dampen the flame that lit up in his chest when he was around the other man, but if anything it’d stoked it. It raged now within Erik, licking up the inside of his chest and down along his limbs. It propelled him toward Charles, even against his will. In only a few minutes he’d been dragged back to the night they’d first kissed, when it was all clumsy heat and curious desperation.

“You could have just stayed in the first place,” Charles pointed out, his tone impetuous. He sounded a great deal like the boy Erik had known so many years ago.

Erik smiled in spite of himself. “I had to move on, Charles.”

Charles pressed his lips together, clearly thinking otherwise but stopping himself from voicing the sentiment. He was close enough to touch finally, if Erik reached out, close enough that Erik could see individual freckles and better observe the warm glow of the sun on his skin. He blended in with the foliage behind him while still being distinct amongst it.

Within the brief minutes they’d been talking, his icy front had melted some and his jaw was no longer so tight. Erik thought he could see Charles’s eyes flicking over him, hastily absorbing as many details as possible the way Erik’s own were. Even the angle of his eyebrows was less harsh.

“Why don’t we sit down?” Charles suggested, apparently going for distantly polite. “No point in standing around.”

Erik did as he was told, dropping back down into the grass and Charles followed, curling his legs underneath him. “How are you?” he asked, as if the beginning of the conversation had never happened in the first place.

Formalities and small talk drove Erik up a wall more than anything else, but he grit his teeth and braced himself to last it. “I’ve been worse. How about you?”

“I’ve been better,” Charles answered, trying for a joke. It was better than Erik could have done. Charles fiddled with his hands in his lap, shifting around and still not quite meeting Erik’s eyes the way he would have liked. “But that’s not what I meant. How _are_ you, Erik? Not just today.”

Erik exhaled through his nose to try and steady himself. _Better, now that you’re here_ , flitted briefly across his mind but it was too flip. Charles must have caught wind of it because he snorted. Erik gave him an apologetic look and tried again. He wasn’t used to Charles’s random telepathic interventions anymore. “I’m tired,” he finally admitted, to Charles and himself. “I’ve been working for a long time, non-stop, and I plan to keep doing so. I like living that way. But there’s a lot still in my head, dragging me down. I was trying to face it, clear it out this weekend. Make my peace.”

Charles nodded at that, not seeming off-put by the answer much. “This isn’t a bad place to rest.”

“It’s not,” Erik conceded, and finally their eyes snagged and Erik couldn’t look away. That bright blue was familiar to him still in a way the forest hadn’t been. Charles was still Charles. He might be changed as well, probably was, in ways Erik couldn’t see, but the essential things were the same. This was still his secret, summer friend, with his too-many freckles and tricky questions and clear-sky eyes. He was still the boy, now man, he’d fallen terrifyingly, head-first in love with, even if he couldn’t admit it at the time, who still had a desperate grip on his heart after so many years and probably still would even if he’d managed to let him go completely, even if he hadn’t come back that day.

Erik thought it was completely selfish of him to feel that way after all this time, especially when he’d been the one to leave, but he couldn’t help it. Something inside him had attached itself as tightly as possible to Charles and couldn’t be severed. He was powerless to do anything about it, much as he had been those ten years ago, rail against it as he might and as he had. Only distance could save him—and even then, as he’d proven, it was very much a short-term solution—could make it so he could keep living the way he wanted to in spite of it.

Charles’s sharp intake of breath was an indicator that some of that had gotten through to him, and he tore his eyes away, cast them out toward the river, still shimmering with heat. Erik immediately tried to quiet his mind but it was too late. He was as rusty with shielding his thoughts as he was with everything else; there was nothing to be done for it.

“I knew you’d go someday,” Charles said suddenly, still looking off at the distance. “I probably knew it that night when you said goodnight, even if I wasn’t willing to admit it to myself at the time. I dreaded it. Every day might have been the last time I got to see you. There was always something in you that was desperate to fly away, to leave the ground and never come back. I thought I was ready for it, but I wasn’t. You let go and I just kept holding on tighter.” Charles coughed out a sharp laugh. It was an ugly, broken sound. “I thought maybe I’d be enough to keep you here, but I wasn’t. You went and I kept hoping maybe someday you’d come back here, back to me.”

“And then I didn’t,” Erik finished the thought, even if it hurt. If the way Charles’s voice was trembling was any indication, he’d caused the other man tremendous pain, doing what he had. He supposed he hardly thought of what it did to the person on the other end of the connection when he pulled away as he did. It was difficult to be faced with it, especially when someone still so dear to him had been the one to endure it.

“You didn’t,” Charles agreed. “I was so angry with you, for doing that to me. I still am, even if I’m not doing a great job of showing it.” Charles finally turned back to him and Erik saw from the red rims of his eyes why he’d been turned away. He forced back a sudden well of tears of his own in response. “I thought if you ever did show your face here again, I’d scream at you and chase you off, but now I see that I never could have. Because no matter what I do, or what you do, no matter how stupid I am or how much of an thoughtless arse you are, the way I feel about you won’t change, at least not really.” He took a quick, deep breath and Erik braced himself. “I still love you, Erik. I still want you with me always.” He put on a frown for show then and hit at Erik’s knee. “Even if you are an absolute, unreliable prat half the time.”

The words broke something inside of Erik, some wall that was holding everything back, so close were they to the ones Charles had whispered to him that night. They’d broke him then as well, but in a different way. It didn’t help that that same flame Erik felt eating away at the inside of him was reflected there in Charles’s eyes, incandescent in the early evening sunlight. He looked so scared and vulnerable, opening himself up to Erik’s examination so soon after having been injured and rejected by him the last time. Erik felt like the worst person alive for several seconds before he could tamp down the melodramatics.

“Could I kiss you?” He wanted nothing more than to jump at Charles, to finally close that distance he’d created so many years ago for good, but he had to ask.

Charles laughed in surprise, full and loud. He shook his head and looked up at the sky, but, “Yes. I probably shouldn’t let you, but if you don’t do it I’m going to. Besides, I think I’m far beyond the point of playing hard to get. Better to just let it be known that you broke first.”

Erik lunged forward and pressed hard up against Charles, catching his mouth. Charles shoved back harder and ended up toppling them over, making it so he landed sprawled out atop Erik. Nothing could have felt better than Charles’s weight finally on top of him again, pressing him down. Erik brought a hand up to slide into Charles’s hair and hold his face steady.

Erik reveled in the plush warmth of Charles’s mouth and let everything pour out of him now that Charles couldn’t look directly at him. He took advantage of the unique sort of anonymity this kind of intimacy provided. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, right up against Charles’s lips. “I’m so sorry, Charles. I didn’t ever mean to hurt you.”

Charles let out a small, shaky breath and pressed another soft, chaste kiss up against Erik’s lips. “It’s alright, my friend.” He pulled back and Erik tried to chase after him but didn’t get very far. Charles poked a finger at him. “That’s not an invitation to do it again, mind you. That’s me forgiving you because holding a grudge for so bloody long is childish. You shouldn’t have done what you did. It would have hurt much less if you’d just let me know so I wouldn’t have to show up every day for a year and look like a fool and feel much worse each time you didn’t show.”

His tone was light, playfully reprimanding, even if the words were true. Erik’s felt another spike of hurt shoot through him at the thought. They were still close, nose to nose, and Erik turned his head so he could nuzzle along the side of the Charles’s face rather than look him square on. “I should have, but then you would have tried to make me stay, and I’m afraid you would have been able to convince me.”

Charles laughed quietly. “I’m glad you give me at least a little credit.”

“You are incredibly convincing,” Erik affirmed, nosing under his ear just a bit.

“That’s good to know,” Charles said, dropping his voice down into a more sultry octave. “Since, while we’re here, I’ve got some rather good ideas about how to spend our time, period of no contact notwithstanding, and how you could make it up to me. You rather left me out to dry last time, after all.”

Erik swallowed, surprised by the heat that furled readily in his stomach at the suggestion. This was all happening rather quickly, but he couldn’t help but be enticed by the proposal, in part because he wasn’t one to sleep around so his trysts were few and far between, but mostly because it was Charles who was offering in the first place. The years had stretched on, but his desire to have Charles hadn’t gone anywhere. “In that case, you’ll have to tell me all about them.”

When he leaned back, Charles was smiling at him, all teeth. There was something dangerous in his expression, hot like the anger that had been missing from most of his words thus far. Erik felt his heart trip over itself and the flush from his abdomen begin to creep up his neck. “I’d love to,” Charles purred and when he kissed him again it was with a vicious intensity, like he was hell-bent on sucking Erik’s life out through his lips. Erik felt himself go slack in the face of the attack, fall boneless underneath Charles, surrendering immediately.

Charles didn’t spend too much time with his mouth. He moved off down his neck to bite at the point where it met his shoulder. Around that time, he also began to grind his hips insistently against Erik, showing him just how hard he already was by pressing his erection up against Erik’s thigh. Erik felt his own cock jerk to attention, but when he tried to push back up against him, Charles pushed his hips down hard to the ground and held them there with surprising strength and ease.

The look he received was dark and dominating. Charles didn’t need to voice the sentiment for Erik to understand what he wanted. It was a clear “no moving.” Moreover, Erik saw now what was happening. Charles was going to take what he wanted from this and Erik was meant to lie still and give it to him. Erik felt a shudder run through him as he nodded. There was something painfully arousing about Charles so completely in control, so sure of himself. He didn’t think it was something he’d take so easily from anyone else, but with Charles it was different.

Charles smiled at his consent and pecked him on the lips as if in reward, grinding down against him again. It was an agonizingly slow, languorous movement and the friction was lovely but not at all enough. Already Erik was aching for relief. He saw how this was going to be more difficult than he’d first thought when he realized how badly he wanted to touch Charles, kiss him everywhere. Fortunately, Charles soon distracted him from his plight.

“Sit up,” he said, and it was framed as a suggestion, but Erik knew it was an order. He did as he was told and Charles moved so he could sit back and accommodate. His fingers flew immediately to Erik’s shirt, tugging it up over his head and tossing it off close to where he’d set his bag. Charles’s eyes poured over the new skin revealed to him hungrily. He ran his hands down along Erik’s arms, tracing out the curves and dips.

Erik sat still and allowed himself to be observed. Charles ground down against him again, and both of them hissed at the friction. After a few long moments Charles leaned forward again to reclaim Erik’s mouth, placing his hands on his waist meanwhile. The kiss was sloppier than before, more rushed now that they both understood the stakes of this.

Charles pulled back only to take Erik’s bottom lip in his teeth and pull at it. At the very least he was moving his hips in a more constant rhythm. It was a small blessing. “You wouldn’t happen to have anything useful in that bag of yours, would you?” he asked, sugar-sweet.

It took Erik’s lust-clogged brain a few moments to connect but it finally did when Charles pushed his ass down against him in a particularly insistent thrust. “I do actually,” he said, thankful for once that he’d used the same damn bag for ten years and hardly ever bothered to clean out all the pockets.

“I think you ought to go fetch it then,” Charles said, right into his ear. “And when you come back, I’d prefer if you left your clothes behind.”

Charles climbed off of him then and Erik lurched into motion a few seconds later, stumbling as he got to his feet. It was difficult to walk in his current state, he noted, but he was too laser-focused on getting back over to his bag to pay much mind to it. Once there, he dug out the small bottle of lube he’d taken to carrying with him during his college days for convenience’s sake—he preferred to be prepared whenever possible—and stripped out of the remainder of his clothing as quickly as he could with his hands shaking the way they were.

When he turned back he had the breath all but knocked out of him, mostly because Charles had also stripped out of his trousers and was just standing there, waiting for him, lit up by the unyielding evening sun. His whole body looked as though it’d been outfitted with a halo which was at complete odds with his expression and the flush on his skin. From where Erik stood, his eyes were almost completely eaten up by pupil, and he was kneading at his lower lip with his teeth while he waited. Erik’s eyes trailed down lower, past the curves he really had no right to have, to his cock which Erik had spent probably too much time thinking about throughout his life. At the moment it was hard, stained red due to inattention and want, and Erik yearned to take it in his hand or into his mouth.

When he noticed Erik looking, Charles smirked at him and even the small, devilish expression lit up his face. He beckoned him back with a tilt of his chin, and Erik really had no idea how he’d ever managed to leave this man.

Erik closed the space between them in record time and Charles pulled him into an immediate embrace. Somewhere along the way, Erik pressed the bottle into Charles’s fingers. He took hold of it and pulled back. “Lie back down.”

Erik complied, sinking back down onto the grass and laying out in front of Charles who stayed where he was, high above Erik for a moment. He felt strange, laid out as he was, smaller and somewhat powerless with Charles over him, but it didn’t last long because soon enough Charles was sinking down right along with him, straddling his lap again but staying up on his knees. He squeezed some of the slick out into his palm and set the bottle aside.

Charles went about slicking his own fingers before he reached back to work at opening himself up, sliding in one finger and then another. His eyes flew closed and he groaned quietly. Erik was thrown, not prepared for the course things were taking, but his mouth went dry as he watched the display, watched as Charles carefully fingered himself open. He wished he could see better, could watch as Charles sank his fingers in and out, but the steady motion of his arm and the wet, obscene sound of it was enough. Since he couldn’t see his hand, Erik watched Charles’s face. He winced from the burn of the stretch, caused by adding another finger, presumably. When he twisted his wrist or rubbed somewhere he liked, however, his mouth fell open and sometimes he would whine his pleasure for Erik to hear.

It was difficult to keep his hands to himself and Erik held onto the grass below for dear life. Keeping his hips still was the worse task because Charles was hovering horribly close to his cock and Erik thought if he bucked his hips up he could rub against him. He was sure of it when Charles started canting his hips, pushing back so he could fuck himself on his fingers because every once in a while he’d brush up against the head of his erection. It was all but unbearable and Erik groaned along with Charles who dropped his head back and bared his neck to the sky when he added another finger.

But he held back, forced himself to obey, let Charles exact the fantastic revenge he’d concocted. His cock was not so pleased with his decision, and it ached and twitched, desperate for relief or friction. The muscles of his abdomen were pulled tight and he felt himself sweating in the heat. Perspiration dripped down along Charles’s skin as well, dewing up along the freckles on his shoulders. He’d picked up the pace of his hand. Before it’d been mostly, slow, lazy thrusts, but now he was moving with purpose. Erik soaked in the little noises he made and shifted uncomfortably in the grass.

The small movement drew Charles’s attention again at least. “Charles,” he groaned, half-pleading with him.

His whole face was flushed pink, his pupils blown out, everything about his expression raw and open. There was a tangible _need_ there, showing now where perhaps it’d been better disguised before. “Please, Charles,” Erik tried again, hoping to convince him to continue on.

Slowly Charles nodded, seemingly to himself, and eased his fingers out, dropping down onto Erik’s waist again so he could bend down and push his tongue back into Erik’s mouth. It was another bruising kiss and Charles pulled back more than once to nip at the corners of his lips. It did begin to soften after some time, slowing until Erik was just pressing up against Charles.

“So good,” Charles murmured, pressing his forehead up against Erik’s. His voice was rough and deep, caused most of what blood Erik had left in his head to rush down. “Doing so well, lying still for me.”

Erik whined in response, unable to do anything else.

Finally, Charles reached back around to wrap his hand around Erik’s cock, giving it a few long, steady pulls. At some point, unbeknownst to him, Charles must have gotten more lubricant because his palm was slick and cool. Even that was an incredible relief and it pulled another sound free from Erik’s chest.

Charles finished slicking him up and ground back against him. “You want this, don’t you? You want me.”

It took Erik a second to realize Charles was asking consent and not just teasing him further. He nodded, forced out a “Yes.”

Charles smiled and some of the sharpness of it was gone, softened by heat. “Think you can keep lying still for me? I’ve waited a long time for this; I’d rather not be rushed.”

Erik nodded again. He considered leaving it at that, but pressed on in spite of the distrust he had in his voice currently. “By all means, take your time.”

It was the right thing to do because it drew a laugh out of Charles and he scooted back and up, moving so he was hovering over Erik’s cock. “Be a dear and hold yourself still for me?”

Erik did, fighting the urge to stroke over himself a couple of times in the process. All his patience and restraint were rewarded when Charles finally sank down, down, all the way down onto Erik’s cock, taking him all at once until he was completely seated again. Charles let out a shaky exhale, screwed his face up as he adjusted to the position. Erik thought he’d probably bit off a little more than he could chew with that last move, but he wasn’t going to be the one to point it out.

It wasn’t like he was complaining. He was more focused on biting hard at the inside of his cheek to fight back a groan and to give himself literally anything else to think about other than shoving up deeper into the other man which was what he really wanted to do. Charles was ridiculously hot and tight inside, the feeling of his body gripping around Erik intoxicating. Considering imaginings of this exact moment had made up the majority of any fantasies he’d indulged in during adolescence and still a considerable amount on through to adulthood, the fact the real thing still exceeded his expectations was rather extraordinary.

That being said, he thought it would be much better if Charles would actually start to move. He appeared to have gotten beyond the initial shock of it all and was wiggling around experimentally on his hips which was somehow worse than sitting still. Erik supposed he _had_ told him to take his time; he just hadn’t thought he’d take it quite so literally.

Finally, Charles reached up to push his hair back out of his face and locked eyes with Erik. He set his hands down on Erik’s abdomen for a bracing point and lifted himself almost all the way up and off before he dropped back down. Both of them groaned. Erik felt dizzy from the simple, singular movement, caught up completely in the easy slide in and out of Charles. Charles must have decided he liked what he felt as well because he finally started up a rhythm in earnest, bouncing up and down in Erik’s lap like he’d done it a hundred times before. His movements were purposeful: he fucked Erik like he had something to prove and Erik supposed he did. Erik continued to dig his fingers into the ground, allowing himself to be swept along for the ride.

Charles was resplendent, ethereal in the waning light of the day. The light shone off the perspiration dripping down his skin, adding to the pink flush already there. Erik thought him the very definition of erotic, up on top of him as he was, greedily fucking himself on Erik’s cock. He whined as he dropped down, shifting, trying to hit some spot or another, still slick and open from the work of his fingers, but hot and clenching nonetheless.

Erik was transfixed watching Charles work himself up and down. He was holding himself still the best he could, just letting Charles take what he would, use him however he wanted. He couldn’t imagine it any other way having seen Charles as he was now. His movements were confident, sinuous, regal somehow, golden-edged as he was like he’d been borne of the sun. It was incredibly arousing to watch him move with such confidence, such certainty.

The wide, open circle of his lips, the tempting peaks of his nipples, and the swollen length of his cock jutting out shamelessly from the darker thatch of hair below his navel stood out red against his pale skin and each drew Erik’s eyes. Erik traced out the lines of his body with his eyes, yearning to do it with his hands. Charles seemed intangible, out of reach, and Erik had spent too long away for him to be able to tolerate that very well.

“Charles,” he gasped. “Could I…” He shoved the thought at Charles, unable to voice it properly.

After a moment’s consideration, Charles nodded, apparently less intent on keeping such a firm grip on Erik now that he had him somewhere he was highly unlikely to leave anytime soon. Erik moved immediately upon gaining permission, running his palms down along the path his eyes had traced previously. He moved from the hard structure of his ribcage, down to the soft pliancy of his waist, all the way to his thighs which were doing the brunt of the work of pushing him up and down. Erik could press his fingers into the excess there as well, but there was muscle underneath the skin which was aiding the process immensely. He kept his hands there, gripping tight, wanting to keep hold of Charles at all costs.

Charles must have hit somewhere good because he threw his head back and a cry ripped free from his throat like nothing Erik had ever heard. It spiraled up into the space above them, followed closely by Erik’s responding groan which acted as some sort of echo. Erik couldn’t help himself any longer. Spurred on slightly by the relinquishing of the ban on touching, he pushed up desperately into Charles. That drew Charles’s eyes down toward him where they hadn’t been since he’d finally pushed inside of him, down from the sky, and Erik almost had to look away again.

Erik was worried he’d pushed it too far, but Charles didn’t seem upset with him. No, that wasn’t the reason he was tempted to look off over his shoulder. It was because his eyes were so dark, the blue almost completely erased by the black of his pupils, but his gaze was soft, affectionate to the point of it being overwhelming.

It was far too much then when Charles smiled at him. “Well, don’t stop,” he complained, still bouncing some on Erik’s lap, never sitting still, grinding down insistently. It was contradictory to everything he’d said before, but Erik supposed he’d finally gotten sick of holding back, sick of the game—sexy though it had been—that they’d been playing. It couldn’t last forever, not with the number of years both of them had been waiting for this.

Erik jerked back into motion, nodding and starting up a steadier rhythm with his hips—and god, what an enormous relief it was to finally be able to truly thrust up into him—, taking the moment to sit up further to capture Charles’s lips again, kissing him with little to no skill, just letting his desperation lead him along. Charles, fortunately, was receptive to it, tilting his head and throwing his arms around Erik’s neck. He moved along with Erik, faster than before due to the new position. They were forced to break apart too soon—the need to breathe was too great—but Erik took the time to smatter kisses wherever he could reach, first down along Charles’s jaw, then down to his neck and shoulders. He paid special attention to the damnable freckles he found there.

Charles’s responses became a constant litany of small, helpless noises that stretched out long into a mewl or came to a peak when Erik made use of his teeth, and as much as Erik liked the cool, confident Charles from before Charles like this, openly needy, soft and responsive was even better. His hand drifted down at one point to tend to his own arousal. He fisted himself clumsily compared to the rest of his movements and Erik took the hint, moving one of his hands to wrap around Charles’s, helping him along.

“God, Charles,” Erik groaned, unable to hold back the words any longer. He felt fit to burst, having gone ten years holding them in. “You’re so gorgeous like this.”

“Just like this?” Charles teased, and Erik didn’t understand how he had the mind for it, but he laughed afterward and Erik couldn’t help but fuck up into him harder because of it.

“Especially like this,” Erik clarified, moving his hand so he could squeeze at Charles’s balls. That earned him another sweet noise from deep in Charles’s throat. “So perfect, up on top, taking what you want. I’d have you all day like this if you asked me to.”

Charles let out a heavy breath, moved both of his hands so he could clutch onto Erik’s back, digging his nails in and messing up the synchrony of their movements in an attempt to initiate a faster pace. “Erik,” he choked out, and hearing his name on Charles’s tongue when he sounded like _that_ was better than any cry so far.

“I wonder,” Erik continued, although forming the words was becoming more and more difficult. He felt pulled tight to the point where he ached with it. Part of him yearned to flip Charles, press him down into the grass so he could push into him properly, but he stayed where he was because this was the way Charles had wanted this to go and he was determined to hold fast to it. “Would that be enough for you?”

“No.” The response was immediate, mindless. “It wouldn’t. One day would never be enough.”

“How many?” Erik asked, feeling Charles tense and quake in his arms, felt his cock jerk in his hands, the head sticky with precum. The temperature of the day was nothing compared to heat between the two of them. “What would it take, Charles? How long would have me inside you like this? How long would you let me fuck you?”

Charles pressed his face hard into Erik’s neck and made a noise that sounded more like a sob than anything else. “Forever,” he finally gasped. “Always, as long as I could keep you here.” The words shook Erik in a way he hadn’t expected, threw him off guard, but Charles didn’t notice. “Oh, _Erik_ , I’m—”

Erik pushed aside his minor shock and threw himself into bringing Charles off, speeding up the pace of his hand and growing truly vicious with the force of his thrusts. It was enough. Charles came with another long cry, streaking white across Erik’s chest, tensed and shuddered in Erik’s arms. He clenched hard around Erik as he did, and it was more than enough to have Erik following right along after him, drug under by the tide that was Charles’s orgasm. He groaned, pushing up helplessly into his partner throughout it. Charles let him ride it out and kissed up along the line of his neck sloppily, pausing only to bite at his jugular. It was a mark, Erik thought, a purposeful claim. He was too shattered to feel anything beyond pleased by the gesture.

Their movements came to a gradual halt, until Charles was only sitting still in his lap with the two of them still wrapped around each other. They were both sticky and it would soon become uncomfortable, but neither seemed inclined to move. Erik certainly didn’t want to pull back quite yet. He was still buried deep inside of Charles and as long as the other man would let him stay there, he was happy to sit still.

“I’ve never done this with…someone like you before,” Charles murmured after a stretch of silence where Erik watched the sky begin to bleed, watched the sun finally begin to dip off beyond the tops of the trees. “Though I guess that’s not that surprising. I was only thinking about it because I think it might be an actual rule. It’s probably not allowed, technically.” Erik pulled back, his eyebrows drawing together, ready to get up on his soapbox about homophobia’s continued presence in modern society, but Charles laughed and it threw him off.

“Oh, no, my friend, that’s not what I meant,” he said. Now that Erik could see him properly he noticed how soft his eyes still were, the upward curve of his lips. “I wasn’t talking about gender. I meant…”

“Human?” Erik supplied, unsure what else he could mean.

Charles’s eyes drifted down and he ran his hands along the line of Erik’s shoulders. “Yes. Not of my world.” His expression grew pondering. “It might not be. It’s rare to come into any extended contact with your kind, and while some of us might do it for the hell of it if given the chance, they’d be outliers. Maybe it was never necessary to officially forbid it.”

“You think you’re going to get into trouble for this?”

Charles shrugged amiably, grinning. “Who knows? I don’t care. I’m too old now for them to do more than give me some disapproving looks and I get those often enough on my own merit.”

Erik chuckled and leaned forward so he could kiss him, over and over again. Desperation overflowed into it, making it so they were clutching at each other, digging fingers into skin and hair by the end of it. Charles moaned and squirmed, reminding Erik quite viscerally of their position. Arousal spiked through him uselessly. Part of Erik wished he _could_ recuperate so quickly and just keep on, but most of him knew that was a bad idea.

Charles caught wind of that thought and the look on his face became mischievous. It made him look younger, Erik thought. “Who was it that wasn’t going to be satisfied?”

Erik frowned and shifted so he could flip Charles over finally, pushing him down and grinding further into him the best he could. Charles made a surprised noise at the sudden change, but he took it well, stretching out in front of him with his arms above his head. Splayed out in the grass like that Erik thought he really did look like some creature from lore that lured careless passerbys into some terrible fate through seduction. They were fairly close to the river. That could do well enough.

But all Charles did was bring a hand up to run his palm along the edge of Erik’s jaw, dragging his thumb over his lower lip then down his neck before dropping his arm back down. Erik, meanwhile, finally gave in to temptation and bent down to lap at one of Charles’s nipples, nipping and sucking at one and then the other. Charles exhaled and pushed up toward Erik compliantly. He dug his hands back into Erik’s hair, carding through it.

“I dreamed of this for a long time, even after you left,” Charles admitted, his voice a quiet rumble under Erik’s lips. The golden glow had left Charles’s skin with the departure of the sun, but he looked no less lovely upon the arrival of the night and the spectrum of the sunset. “I would have let you do this to me the last day you came here. I wanted you to.”

Erik bent down, pressing his forehead up against Charles’s chest. They’d been far too young and Erik had been far too confused. That would have been disastrous, even if he’d probably wanted to as well. There was something else that weighing upon him however, beyond that. Very carefully, he pulled out of Charles who whined and moved as if to follow him. Erik gently held him still, kept his head bowed. “I’m sorry for what I did,” he said before he could stop himself. He needed to apologize more completely, at least try to explain. “Not for leaving, although I chose probably the worst time for it, but for not telling you. And for staying away so long after that.” Charles stayed silent. “I had to leave, Charles. You know that. I have a life to live. I don’t belong here.” Charles’s arms came back up around him and Erik thought he could feel him nod slightly. “It’d be like me trying to bring you back with me. It’d kill you.”

“I know.” Charles’s voice was very small, resigned but somber. “I know how it works. I know the limitations put on us. That doesn’t mean I don’t still wish they weren’t there.”

Erik knew how he felt. “Thank you for coming here. You didn’t have to show yourself.”

“Yes I did,” Charles replied immediately. “It would have killed me not to. I watched you for a while trying to talk myself out of it and failed spectacularly.”

Erik chuckled and rolled off to the side so he wouldn’t be crushing Charles so completely, but it seemed to annoy him more than anything and he turned as well, curling back up against Erik so they never lost contact entirely. “You must have been bored. I wasn’t doing anything interesting.”

“I was having a minor crisis, so I was hardly lacking in the thought department. Besides, it’s been a long time, so I had plenty to look at.”

Erik didn’t think of himself as particularly shy, but the thought of Charles watching him like that, looking him over, seeing what had changed and what hadn’t brought some heat to his cheeks. He made to cover it by running his eyes slowly down Charles’s body which was still stretched out nicely in front of him, bare and slowly losing its earlier flush. “I know what you mean.”

Charles did turn pink in the cheeks at that and his eyes darted off. It was egregiously adorable. “The point I was trying to make was that I would never have let you get away so easily again.”

“I did sit out here about five hours,” Erik pointed out. “I wasn’t in a rush to leave.”

Charles smiled a small, sweet smile, brought a hand up to run his fingers down along Erik’s side. “I’m glad. A lot’s changed in the wood but not much has here. I came here once or twice a month to check up on it after that first year passed and I was sure you were gone for good. Usually I stick to that, but I sensed something tromping around over here today which was strange. Most animals aren’t so foolish as to be out in the middle of the day like that.”

Erik shrugged, pressing up slightly into Charles’s touch. “I’d forgotten how hot it can get here in August.”

“August,” Charles repeated like the word was foreign to him. It was painfully nostalgic. As far as Erik could tell, his sense of time didn’t work the same way as normal people’s did. He understood years, but the division of months was meaningless to him. He curled his free fingers into the grass between them. “What’s it like? Where you live now.”

Erik was surprised he’d asked, but went on to tell him about the city where he lived currently. It got hot, but not this hot in the summers. The concrete absorbed the heat and all the metal could act like a frying pan though so some days were better spent indoors with the air conditioning cranked. He told him about the paths he liked to run and the things he saw. He’d been to a couple of museums so far and he thought Charles would like them. He told him that Raven was doing well. She didn’t live in the same city, but she liked to come and visit when she wasn’t busy with her free-lance work. When pressed, he even offered up some details about his job which most people found fairly boring, so he didn’t stay long on the topic.

As he spoke, the day faded out. Blue swallowed up red in the sky and clouds swept in to cover the space in between. The heat began to dissipate until the temperature around them was far more bearable. The forest came alive as well. If he wasn’t with Charles, Erik thought he might be uncomfortable with it, but the breaking of the silence was almost a relief. He did slowly become aware of how naked he was which wasn’t entirely pleasant.

“I don’t think I’d like it in your city,” Charles piped up. He’d settled down into the grass, let his head loll to the side, but he listened as attentively as ever as Erik spoke, asking questions and interjecting occasionally.

“Probably not,” Erik admitted.

“How long will you stay there?” Erik had mentioned the situation was only temporary.

“I don’t know. I’ll see how it goes.”

“Would you move to another city then, after this?”

Charles didn’t seem to understand how little Erik had planned. Erik supposed that made sense, if Charles had lived his whole life in one place and would always stay there. “Maybe, but not all cities are the same. They all have a different feel to them.”

“You’ll have to come back and explain it all over to me again, I guess,” Charles suggested lightly, but there was something wistful in his words.

Something Erik had been covering up so long throbbed in his chest, forcing him to better acknowledge its presence which he did, but he wasn’t quite ready to voice it yet. “I guess.”

Charles pressed his lips together, not pleased with that response, clearly.

Erik took the pause to sit up. His back protested at having been laying on the ground for so damn long but he ignored it and put his hand out to help pull Charles upright as well. “Tell me about what’s changed here. Seems like a million more vines or so have sprouted up since I left and I managed to trip over half of them.”

It was an obvious deflection, but Charles perked up some at the question, some light came back into his eyes. He sank back into Erik’s space, reaching to grab both of his hands and twine their fingers together between them as he spoke. Erik didn’t really know what he was talking about half the time, but he nodded along. It’d been a long time since he’d heard so much forest talk. Charles spoke of the health and decline of very specific species of trees and creatures, told him about a season of heavy rain that had flooded the place and wreaked havoc, as well as a wind storm that had knocked down some of the oldest trees in the forest. Erik thought he’d feel like he was reading a textbook if he was listening to anyone else, but Charles made a shift in soil composition sound like poetry.

As always, he never spoke about his own people, left them out entirely, but Erik didn’t mind much. Even if it wasn’t true, it wasn’t so bad to imagine Charles lived as he did, with minimal connections. His longest story was a tale about his apparently heroic rescue of a squirrel that’d fallen into the river and almost drowned. He grew extremely animated over it, miming out some of the action for Erik’s viewing pleasure.

“You’re smiling,” Charles pointed out, returning the gesture. “I missed that.”

Erik went to stop without thinking, pressing his lips together. Charles shook his head at him. “That’s the last time I point it out to you.”

It was properly night by that time. Erik knew he should have headed off ages ago. He was worried about his rental car which he’d parked near the forest, out in the middle of nowhere along the dirt road. He needed to eat and get a hotel room and get ready for the day to come. More immediately, he wanted to put his clothes back on. It wasn’t cold, per se. He doubted it would get too cold even in the dead of night. Still, he wasn’t one to walk around with nothing on.

Charles was still holding onto his hands, running his thumbs over Erik’s knuckles, pressing on the spaces in between, which meant he had to pull them away. Neither of them was very happy about that. “I’m cold,” he claimed. “I just want to get dressed.”

Charles’s proceeding expression was hilarious, almost a full pout. “Already? I can’t imagine it’s that cold yet. Besides, you’d just get them sticky.” He had a point there. Erik was still noticeably marked up across his stomach. Charles glanced over his shoulder toward the river. “Come wash up first at least.”

 _In the river_? was Erik’s immediate thought, but Charles was already up and moving, not at all concerned with how little he had on. He stepped into the river without hesitation and sank down until Erik could only see his chest and up. He made an encouraging gesture and Erik found he didn’t want to resist.

He was still skeptical of the water, but he figured Charles would pester him until he got in one way or another. So he stood, stretching and catching sight of the half-moon above them, and then went to follow Charles in. The water was cool, but not painful. Still, he went in one foot at a time rather than all at once like Charles.

Eventually he’d dropped down to the same level, letting the water flow freely around him. He did rub at his stomach to clean off. He sure hoped this wasn’t all some fever dream and that he wouldn’t come back to work with some terrible water-borne disease because he’d decided to take a dip in a river in the middle of nowhere completely nude.

“It’s perfectly safe,” Charles claimed, sounding offended at Erik’s line of thought. “You used to swim here all the time. It never made you sick before.”

Erik supposed he had a point. So he stayed where he was, doing his best to keep himself from being buoyed along by the current. It was nice to finally wash off the sweat still lingering from the day’s earlier exertions. He didn’t exactly have anything to dry off with, but he’d feel better if he did end up driving and booking a room if he didn’t look like he’d been tramping around a forest in the heat all day.

He must have been being too quiet because Charles splashed him. Erik didn’t know if it was purposeful but he ended up hitting him directly in the face. He jerked back in surprise and Charles let out a peal of nervous laughter that spoke to it having been accidental. Erik wiped the water out of his eyes and shoved his hair back out of his face where it had been displaced. Once his vision was clear again, he zeroed in on Charles who’d slunk away a few yards and was doing his best to look innocent. He was good but Erik didn’t believe him in the slightest.

Realistically, Erik knew he could just let it go. He could be above it and just tell Charles it was alright. Then again, it’d been such a strange day already that he was inclined to go along with it.

Erik went after Charles, creeping up on him carefully and trying not to give away his intentions. It must have worked because Charles didn’t dart away any further, just watched him warily until he was rather close and it was too late. Erik struck back, splashing at Charles and then ducking away to a safer distance.

Charles coughed and made an offended noise. His expression was so comically shocked that Erik had to laugh. That was the wrong thing to do because Charles lunged after him, apparently intent on dunking him completely. Erik made to get out of his way but Charles was surprisingly adept in the water and he couldn’t evade him for long. Charles backed him in against the opposite bank and got his arms around him. There was a brief struggle that ended in both of them dunking down underneath the water.

Erik resurfaced, spluttering and catching his breath. Charles popped up nearby grinning maniacally. Erik aimed another splash at him—pointless, really, since they were both completely soaked, but Erik didn’t care. He was having fun, which wasn’t something he thought he’d done in quite a while—which was soon returned. They kept up their battle for a few minutes, circling each other and trying to catch the other off-guard, disturbing the peaceful night with their cries and shouts.

It ended when they found themselves chest to chest once again and Charles took the opportunity to slant their mouths back together. Charles tasted like river water which wasn’t as unpleasant as it probably could have been. Erik did his best to drag him closer, even if it was difficult since both of them were slippery. Charles tilted his head meanwhile to deepen the kiss, pushing his tongue into Erik’s mouth to twine with his own.

They kissed and kissed until Erik’s lips were numb from it and the air around them began to feel cool compared to the water. Finally, Erik pulled back, moving to kiss Charles’s face and drag his lips down the curve of his neck over the edge of his shoulder. Charles bared his neck, letting his head fall to one side.

“I don’t want you to leave,” he whispered the words quick and quiet like he had the first time he’d told Erik he loved him. They sank into the darkness around them before they could get very far. “I know you have to go, but… I don’t know if I can bear living apart from you, even just as long as last time over again. It felt like an eternity.” Warmer droplets of water were suddenly dripping down face from where he’d pressed it into Charles’s neck, and Charles’s breathing hitched. Erik clutched him closer and clenched his teeth together, trying to bite back the lash of pain that ripped through him, knowing that he’d been the one to do this. He’d hurt Charles and was still hurting him.

“I can’t stay,” he said, forcing himself to pull back and look Charles in the eyes while he cried, to face what he’d done. It wasn’t sobbing, just a slow, steady stream of tears rolling off down his face, making his eyes shine. He reached to wipe them away, to hold Charles’s face in his hands. “But I won’t leave forever.”

Erik thought he’d probably meant to come there for the last time that day. He’d wanted to cut ties for good, have one last look and be on with it, but he understood now that that couldn’t be done. He couldn’t cut off this part of himself without breaking something permanently. This was something he _had_ to keep hold of. What was between him and Charles, as ridiculous and illogical as it was, it was invaluable to both of them. It was a tie, yes, but Erik thought having just one wouldn’t hold him down, especially when it was so intangible as this one. Instead, it was more likely to keep him grounded.

So, he pressed on. “I’ll never leave for that long again, Charles. I can’t…I can’t come back all the time, but I don’t want to stay away for too long. I don’t think I could bear it either. I meant to come here today for the last time but…I see now that I can’t. I can’t leave this place. I can’t leave you. And I won’t.” He knew his speech was stilted, that he probably wasn’t saying what he needed to, but he hoped Charles would understand anyway.

Erik thought he did. The look in his eyes was hopeful, more than sad now. “Really?”

“It’s the best I can do,” Erik said, and it was the truth.

“It’s enough,” Charles reassured him, and something like a smile was stretching back across his face. “Would you promise it? Would you give me your word that you won’t stay away that long again?”

“Barring something disastrous happening,” Erik amended, wanting to be realistic, “I promise.”

Something bright and wonderful spread across Charles’s face. “You’d best keep that. You know what happens if you go back on your word after giving it to someone like me, don’t you?”

Erik felt light, having unburdened himself of his feelings at last, like he could float right up out of the river and into the treetops. “What?” he asked, humoring Charles.

“I’d have to drag you away and keep you forever,” he said, dropping his voice so it seemed more dramatic. Erik drug him closer so he could kiss the wicked grin off his lips.

They ended up back up on the shore, dripping wet but paying no mind to it. Charles had pushed Erik’s shoulders back down into the grass and climbed up on top of him again, straddling his waist. He leaned down to lie fully on top of Erik. He thought Charles might be moving to reconnect their mouths—he couldn’t help but want to. Kissing Charles was addictive. He’d only gotten a taste that first and last day, and it had never been enough—but he went back to Erik’s neck, nipping along the softer skin underneath his jaw all the way down to his chest.

Erik thought it must be against some sort of universal law for him to feel so content, so happy. The bubbly elation in his chest was making him anxious if only because he rarely felt it and because he was always fully aware of the inevitable drop that would come after it. Then again, this wasn’t anything new. The intensity of his feelings for Charles had always been overwhelming. They’d been what had scared him away in the first place and what had drug him back all these years later. He knew now he had the choice to run or stand firm, last the storm so as to see the calm on the other side.

He stopped worrying about it so much when Charles licked up over one of his nipples. He bit back the majority of the sound that tried to escape his throat, but not all of it. It encouraged Charles to lap more insistently at the nub and apparently caused his cock to twitch against Erik’s stomach, making him aware of its renewed presence. Erik gave up on the prospect of thinking after that, at least for a while.

Charles was moving with determination, some clear goal in mind which Erik was inclined to allow him to achieve. He shifted to tend to Erik’s other nipple briefly before moving down lower, sliding his body along the length of Erik’s as he went and creating the most frustrating sort of friction imaginable. Erik could feel his own cock beginning to harden again, having taken interest in the proceedings. Charles continued on down, haphazardly mapping out Erik’s torso with hands and tongue and teeth, all the way down until he was pushing at Erik’s thighs to make room for himself between them and Erik could feel his hot breath up against his half-full erection.

“Charles—” he said, propping himself up on his elbows. It wasn’t really an objection. He really didn’t know what he would have said if he’d been allowed to continue talking, but he wasn’t because Charles didn’t pay him any mind. Instead, he took his cock in hand and licked a long line up the length of it. Erik’s previous statement was cut off by a groan and he dropped back down flat onto the grass, digging his fingers into it if only to have something to hold onto and it hadn’t let him down so far.

Charles wasted no time, moving with as much efficiency as he had before, and he soon took just the head of Erik’s cock into his mouth, sucking around it. Erik didn’t think he’d ever gotten so hard, so quickly in his life. For several long minutes he allowed himself to drown in the wet heat of Charles’s mouth, lost himself in the broad strokes of his tongue and the incredible pressure when Charles took as much of him as he could and swallowed.

He was panting again by the time he managed to lift his head up and look down at Charles. Charles must have noticed because he pulled back long enough to smile up at him. His lips were shiny and swollen redder than before and Erik decided he couldn’t take it anymore.

He sat up and pulled Charles up and into him. Charles seemed confused, but he went willingly enough. Erik winced at the loss of his hand on him but pushed past it. Carefully he flipped their positions, rolling Charles so he was on his back with Erik over him. Charles let out a surprised breath and raised his eyebrows.

Erik offered him a rueful smile. “Sorry. I just can’t take not being able to touch you any longer.”

Charles chuckled and laid back further. “I suppose that’s a good enough excuse for making me stop. But you owe me now.”

“I’ll have to give you a raincheck.” Erik nudged at Charles’s thighs. Charles parted them for him and he had to take a moment just to look. Charles really was beautiful, still dripping from their dip in the river, spread out for him like this, inviting, enticing as ever. Erik didn’t think of himself as particularly greedy, but with Charles it was different. He really was starting to believe he could have him forever and it still wouldn’t be long enough.

He gave in shortly after, running his hands over every inch of him as he’d wanted to the second he saw him and had only shortly been allowed to earlier, mapping out every line and curve of his body and leaning in to kiss him meanwhile. He felt like he was breaking a fast that had lasted years, and he supposed that it had. As a result he was trying to fill up as quickly as possible, ravenous and desperate.

Charles took it splendidly, seemingly doing his best to draw Erik in further and succeeding by arching up into his hands and making small, breathless sounds when Erik touched somewhere he particularly liked—his lower back, his hip, his neck. Erik could tell that he was growing frustrated however when he rubbed at his thighs rather than touching him where he probably wanted it most. When Charles whined and tossed his head back, showing off his neck again, a smooth curve of skin that repeatedly drew Erik’s eyes, Erik decided to grant him pity.

Really, it wasn’t any great sacrifice considering it was half the reason he’d flipped Charles in the first place. Erik couldn’t let Charles have all the fun. Erik bent down to drag his mouth down the middle of Charles’s abdomen, down over the soft of his stomach to where his cock lay already, red and wanting. Erik took the hot flesh in his hand and gave it one slow stroke up the length of it before taking the head in his mouth.

Erik felt his own cock twitch at finally being able to taste Charles. Charles himself moaned long and low in relief and his legs twitched on either side of Erik where they’d been pushed up and apart. Erik took his time again, licking stripes along Charles’s cock and deviating occasionally to lap and suck at the tip. Charles dug his fingers into Erik’s hair and clutched on tight, pulling and sometimes guiding, but he let Erik pull away when he drifted off down lower.

Erik had been keeping hold of Charles’s thighs as he worked, partially because he didn’t want to be kicked and partially because he wanted to stay touching the other man as much as possible, but he moved one then, down to rub at Charles’s entrance. Charles hissed and canted his hips up toward Erik mindlessly. He was relaxed enough that Erik could push beyond the puckered skin and get the tip of his thumb inside.

He was taken aback for a second time by the feeling of Charles’s body around him, even just that small bit. Erik’s cock ached, the memory of being buried deep still at the surface of his mind. He nosed down lower, driven by the tight heat in his abdomen, and pulled his hand back so he could replace it with his mouth.

Charles let out a little yelp of surprise and did try to close his legs. Erik slid his hands up, pressing where thigh transitioned into hip to keep him still. “Erik—” Charles choked out as Erik licked over the rim of his hole, but didn’t continue into a protest, so Erik kept on, exploring the new space.

Erik lapped and kissed at Charles, encouraged when he started to push back up toward him with his hips, asking with his body for more. Erik didn’t hesitate to dip the tip of his tongue inside when he thought Charles would take it. It drew another ragged groan from deep in Charles’s chest and caused Erik to grind down against the grass below him, helplessly seeking some sort of friction.

Charles tolerated the ministrations, let Erik keep his face buried between his legs for a while longer before he started tugging him up, moving more urgently than before. “Erik, please,” he whimpered. “Please, I can’t take it anymore.”

Erik gave one last lick, but he knew how Charles felt—he’d wanted a chance to take his time as well, but even he had his limits—so he forced himself to pull back, sit up and slide in close once more. Charles pushed up against him and he ground down in an immediate, instinctive response. Erik squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth at the slide of skin against skin. He’d gone slowly for as long as he could, but neither of them were in the mood for being patient any longer.

Charles had been slow and deliberate before, but now that Erik had the reigns he moved with none of the same grace or restraint. He couldn’t help it. It was all he could do to set up a quick, punishing rhythm with his hips, grinding his cock down against Charles’s. Fortunately, Charles didn’t seem to mind. He brought one of his hands to steady them, made it so Erik didn’t have to try to precisely aim each thrust which was good since precision was beyond him at that point. He bucked back as well, rubbing against Erik in return.

Erik had to lean up over him, supported mostly on his hands for it to work, which gave him a wonderful view of Charles’s face, meaning he could watch the way his expression shifted throughout the final leg of their tryst. He could watch the wide open curve of his mouth, caught on some silent syllable, the flush staining his cheeks, the way his eyebrows drew together. Charles hitched his legs up at some point, one after the other around Erik’s waist. It changed the angle of his movements and knocked the breath out of both of them.

In spite of how frantic his motions were, the position lent itself to a steadier build of heat and tension with the only thing to contribute to it being the synchronous, sinuous movements of their bodies, working as one to bring the other to his limit. Charles went first, hitting and subsequently passing over the peak of his pleasure, sobbing out little pleas as he came for the second time. Erik was quick to follow as he had been before, pressing down insistently against Charles and choking out his name.

Erik collapsed soon after. His body ached with exertion after having been so long in disuse, but it was a pleasant kind of ache, the same one he felt sometimes after a good long run. He’d at least managed to fall off to the side of Charles instead of directly on top of him and both of them lay catching their breath for some time. When he regained any sort of motor skills, Erik reached down to take one of Charles’s hands so he could pull it up and kiss his palm. Charles curled his fingers, brushing up against Erik’s cheek, and rolled over so they were face to face again, curling back into him. He was still boneless, flushed and sated. His lips stretched into a lazy, satisfied kind of curl.

Erik wrapped his arm around Charles, kept him close as he had before. Charles let out a long exhale and shifted slightly. Erik looked down at him, not willing to look away, and saw he had that look on his face he used to get when he had something to say. Erik let him work himself up to it, remaining content with their intimacy for the time being.

“I still can’t believe you’re here,” Charles finally said. “After all that time. I still remember the day I walked out to the edge of the forest and saw the ‘for sale’ sign by your house.”

Erik remembered that day, remembered how determined he’d been not to feel anything, to keep it locked away so he could keep himself in check. “You saw that?” He thought about pointing out why it’d happened, but thought that could be saved for another time. It was a difficult time for him to remember in its own right.

Charles nodded. “I thought that was really the end. Not that you’d given me much hope before, running off forever the second I worked up the courage to kiss you. It felt a lot like the teenage version of you leaving on our wedding night.”

Apparently Charles wasn’t quite ready to leave it alone yet. Erik thought maybe that was fair, although part of him wished Charles would let it be for a little while so they could just enjoy the moment. He allowed himself to be pulled back to that day, to that time, to that decision. It really had been horrible timing. “That was why I went running off in the first place.”

Charles coughed out a laugh. “Was I that horrible of a kisser?”

“No!” Erik said, too loud, quick to correct himself. Charles laughed at him for it and Erik poked his side. The other man rolled away for a second trying to get away from him before he came right back. “You weren’t. I was just…scared.” It was embarrassing to say aloud, even then, so much time later, but it was the truth.

The mood sobered considerably after that. Charles’s gaze softened and he brought a hand up to run back along the side of Erik’s jaw. He considered him for a long moment. Erik pressed into his palm because it was warm and familiar.

“You know,” Charles finally began, “love isn’t a cage you have to try and escape constantly.” Erik closed his eyes and listened. “It’s just a bond between two people who’ve made a choice. It’s a connection, not a chain. I don’t want to hold you back from whatever it is you want to do in your life, but I want to be a part of it in whatever way I can be. The last thing I want is to keep you grounded. I’d much rather see you fly. Does that make sense?”

Slowly Erik nodded because he thought that it was finally beginning to. “I’m sorry. I was stupid.”

“No,” Charles assured him. “You were young and afraid.” A pause. “But you do have the most horrendous timing of anyone I’ve ever met.”

Erik chuckled, glad for the slight release of tension. He opened his eyes and looked back at Charles again. He thought that he couldn’t go through life not seeing this exact sight as many times as he could, just Charles laid out beside him, close and comfortable. It was all very new to him, and it did still make him nervous, but if Charles was willing to give him the room he needed to roam, he didn’t see why he shouldn’t always be able to come back to this.

Erik braced himself for what felt like the millionth time that night and let himself be the vulnerable one for once. He thought that he was finally ready. “I love you too,” he said, all in a rush because Charles had said it twice and he’d never said it back, and because it was terrifyingly true, always had been. “Nothing’s changed for me either. I left because I was afraid of how badly I wanted to stay.” He paused to run his fingers back into Charles’s hair. There were a million things he wanted to say and, frustratingly, a lot of them still refused to come out, but he thought that they had time. He didn’t allow himself indulgences very easily, but just this one wouldn’t kill him. It was like Charles had said: it was a choice, and much like before, it was already made, had been for a long time. “I never want to be without you.”

“Thank you, Erik,” Charles murmured and Erik thought the corners of his eyes looked wet again. He made a face and brought a hand up to swipe at them. “Someday I won’t let you make such a mess of me. I feel like I’m five all over again. I hope you know I was smitten from the first day I met you.”

Erik wasn’t sure he believed that, but he wasn’t going to tell Charles what to think. “I think I was slower on the uptake. It did just suddenly occur to me one day and it drove me crazy after that. I agonized over it for months.”

“Oh, boohoo,” Charles mocked playfully. “You’ll find no sympathy here. Poor Erik, strung out for a few months. Meanwhile I was jerked along for ten years, _twice_.” His tone was light, not hiding any weight as it had been before so Erik allowed himself to laugh.

“No one told you to put all your eggs in one basket,” he chided him.

“Says the basket himself,” Charles retorted, scrunching his face up in mock irritation. It was easy banter, easy as it had been ten years ago. Erik was surprised at how happy he was to revisit that kind of interaction.

They joked back and forth for a few minutes more before a particularly insistent beam of moonlight reminded Erik once more that he wasn’t exactly prepared for a night in the woods. Slowly he sat up, pulling Charles up along with him. The other man went willingly.

“If I’m going to stay here for the night,” Erik explained, since he didn’t see how he couldn’t at that point, “I really do need to go pick up some supplies.” Like food and water. And maybe a flashlight. Or a blanket. He also needed to get his suitcase and make sure no one had done anything to his rental car.

Anxiety crept into Charles’s expression, still present after everything. Erik wished that it wouldn’t, but he couldn’t blame him. “Alright,” he said. “But you’re not allowed to walk off and get cold feet about this all over again, got it?”

“Got it,” Erik agreed. He took one of Charles’s hands and brought it up to his lips, kissing his knuckles in mock seriousness.

Charles pulled his hand back, giving him a rye sort of look. “I don’t think I trust your kisses as promises anymore, Mr. Lehnsherr.”

Erik allowed him that. “You’ll have to take my word then.”

Charles nodded, accepting. He shoved lightly at his shoulder. “Go on. I’ll see you soon.”

“You will.”

Erik dressed and made his way back out to his car. It was much easier the second time around. No one had done anything horrible to it which was a good sign. He had less luck trying to find a place to get supplies. He had to leave town because nothing was open which took time he hadn’t really meant to take. He ended up at a Tesco because it was about all he could find but it did the trick.

Driving back he tried to process everything that had happened, everything he’d said and done. He wondered if he might feel some urge to leave again, some lingering regret, but it wasn’t there. He just felt giddy and young and in love. It was new to him, but it wasn’t bad.

It was getting close to midnight by the time he stumbled back into the clearing. The flashlight he’d bought had helped, but he was still inexperienced. He was relieved to see Charles down by the river. He’d redressed as well and was looking in. Erik wondered if maybe there were fish.

He dumped his supplies over by the trees and approached Charles quietly. As he went he saw Charles had something in his hands. It took until he was sat down next to him to see what it was.

Charles glanced up from the book and smiled over at him. “There you are. You were taking a while, so I went and saw if I could find this. I’d kept it, but I didn’t know exactly where I’d put it. But here it is.”

It was the book of poems Erik had given him the day he’d left. Of course it was. Of course Charles had kept it. It looked worn, well-read, but still maintained. It was dog-eared throughout, a bad habit Charles had always had. It was Erik’s turn to fight back tears.

Charles noticed, of course, and brought a hand up to rest against his cheek. “What, you thought I’d just throw it out? I wasn’t going to toss away a good book over a broken heart. What a waste that would be.”

Erik shook his head. Charles handed him the book and he took it, thumbing through the pages, catching sight of some of the pages Charles had wanted to save. The river trickled along below, acting as a quiet soundtrack to the whole affair. The water was clear enough for some of the stars to be reflected in its surface along with the persistent semi-circle of the moon.

“I love you,” Erik said, because he could.

Charles leaned his head on top of Erik’s shoulder. “I know.”

They sat by the river for some time but eventually Erik lured Charles over toward the trees where he laid a blanket down for them to make use of. “Could I read some to you?” Charles asked, holding up the book. “You said you only read some of it for class, but there’s quite a few in here that I like.”

“Okay,” Erik said. He was hardly going to deny Charles anything he wanted at that point.

Charles sat with his legs stretched out, but Erik was tired from a whole day of travelling and opted to lay down with his head in Charles’s lap. Charles laughed at him a little for it, but bent over to press a short, sweet kiss to his lips anyway before straightening back up. He set one of his hands on Erik’s stomach and held the book open with the other.

Charles cleared his throat dramatically before he started. “Alright. This one’s short.”

“Good. I don’t know if I could stay awake through all of _Leaves of Grass_ ,” Erik mumbled, letting his eyes slip closed so he could just focus on Charles’s voice.

Charles patted his stomach twice in a particularly ineffective form of reprimand. “No interrupting, you. You’re meant to be listening.” Erik bit his lip so he wouldn’t say anything else. Apparently satisfied, Charles began.

It was just two lines, short and simple. “Simple, spontaneous, curious, two souls interchanging/With the original testimony for us continued to the last.” Charles stretched it out anyway, reading it with a musicality that Erik didn’t think he could have managed. Erik understood what he was trying to say with it.

“I kind of wish there were more of it,” Charles commented when he was done, flipping to the next one. “But Whitman’s not much for love poems, so I’m working with what I have.”

“I’ll bring you some Keats next time and you can woo me till morning,” Erik suggested, making Charles laugh quietly at him. “But I liked it,” Erik insisted, feeling Charles’s hand settle back, warm and steady on his stomach. “What’s next?”

Erik watched him this time as he went to start on the next one, clearing his throat again for emphasis, and he swore he could see the future reflected in Charles’s eyes.


	6. Epilogue: Thirty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to post so closely together, but I decided I just wanted to get all of it up finally. This one is just something short to tie it all up. I was trying not to make it cheesy, but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ what can you do?

-30-

“Erik!” Charles was shouting at him from outside, already in position. “Hurry up, you’re going to miss it. There’s no signal out here anyway.”

Charles had a point. The reception had always been terrible. So Erik, tossed his phone aside and went to join him on the blanket. Charles took his hand immediately as he was prone to doing and pointed up at the sky. There was meant to be a meteor shower that night. Charles had been excited about it for at least a month so Erik had made sure to fly in at the right time to watch it with him.

They waited in quiet anticipation for it to start, the silence between them comfortable after so many years.

Erik’s life had shifted quite a bit after that first afternoon he’d returned to the forest and to Charles, but in many ways it had also stayed the same. He kept his job and his apartment, he paid his rent and his loans and spent most of his time in the city. He did however start making use of his vacation days. He tried to fly back at least once a month for the weekend. It wasn’t much, but plane tickets could be expensive. Charles was very forgiving about it and Erik was grateful.

They hit a bump early on when the winter months rolled around since Erik couldn’t really spend the night in the snow. The first winter was a struggle, but they lasted it. After that, Erik began to plan a way around it.

When he’d first suggested the idea of building a small cabin of sorts out in the forest, Charles had been hesitant. He seemed unsure what the others would think, but Erik didn’t see how it could be that harmful as long as he didn’t go ripping anything up. It wasn’t like he was planning on putting in a condominium. It would act as some place for him to stay when he visited and seemed like the most logical solution to their problem. Erik had pointed out that it also meant he could stay longer than two days at a time and suddenly Charles was much more interested in the idea and seemingly willing to fight everyone else to get it okayed if he had to.

As it turned out, as long as he wasn’t hurting the forest, Charles’s people couldn’t actually step in to forcibly stop him. They weren’t incredibly happy, but Erik insisted he’d be as non-invasive as possible to Charles and had him pass it along. With that, construction was underway. It was kind of a pain in the ass to build, even for Erik who enjoyed that sort of work because they had to drag all the supplies out into the forest, over into the clearing where he’d decided to put it. Charles did his best to help out, but more often than not he was more of a distraction than anything else and had to be chased off so Erik could get what he needed to done.

It took a few months and more weekends than he’d anticipated, but Erik was happy when it was finished and Charles was ecstatic. There wasn’t much in it in the end—a small bed, a table and chairs, some shelves—but it was insulated and sturdy. Besides, as much as Erik liked the open air, he was excited to finally be able to have sex with Charles in an actual bed for once.

With the cabin in place, Erik came more along the lines of twice a month, and stayed for an entire week during the summer. Over the years, the place became well-stocked with books and blankets. Erik’s father’s chess set also found a new home on one of the shelves or, more often, set out on the table. Erik took a new, better-paying job in a new city but the cabin remained where it was, always ready for him to return to it, waiting for him as Charles did.

Raven and his co-workers took notice of his absences and all of a sudden everyone was needling him about his so-called long-distance boyfriend who he stole away to visit constantly. It bothered him at first, but he eventually got used to it. It was the closest thing to the truth that he could manage. Raven hassled him so much for a picture that finally he made Charles sit down with him one day so they could take one with his phone. Charles was fascinated by the whole process and didn’t put up too much of a fuss, and ultimately Erik was sort of glad to have one of them together.

When he showed it to Raven he got her enthusiastic seal of approval which he hadn’t really needed but found he didn’t mind having. He thought maybe someday he’d tell her the truth. After what they’d been through together he thought he might owe her that much.

Sometimes he stayed away for longer than a couple of weeks, and he could tell those times weighed on Charles, but they weighed on him as well. Only once or twice was it intentional. The older he got, the less restless he became and it was a bit of a relief. He liked to travel still, thought he might like to move cities again soon if he could get another job lined up, but having a place and someone to return to no matter how far he wandered was something he valued immensely.

The years slipped by, but Charles was always there, always waiting to welcome him back with a smile and a kiss. Erik hadn’t thought he’d ever settle down, but when he was with Charles he understood why most people did, and thought that he might like to as well eventually. He’d been dabbling some in writing recently and thought that would certainly give him a lot more free-time. He wouldn’t tell Charles until he was sure, but it felt right to him.

It wasn’t perfect. There were bumps along the way, fights and arguments, but Erik doubted there was anything that could truly come between them. They’d made their choice and nothing could change that.

Erik wondered sometimes what might have happened if he hadn’t found Charles out in the woods that day, 25 years ago, but he didn’t like to think about it for long. He’d lived his life long enough without Charles in it as it was, he didn’t need to extend that even only in his mind.

Instead, he remained fully in the present moment, leaning up against the other man, watching the sky fall. In spite of the years, Charles’s eyes still lit up like they used to when he found a new tree for them to climb as he sat and watched the show. He pointed out constellations and forced Erik to close his eyes and make a wish at one point. Erik thought sometimes that it must be impossible to love one person so much, that one day it was just going to consume him entirely. At that point, it was far beyond him to mind.

“Come on,” Charles insisted, the smile he’d had on since the moment it started still stretched out wide across his face. “That’s the best part. Wishes on stars are powerful things.”

Erik squeezed his hand and humored him, closed his eyes.

When he opened them back up, Charles was quick to inform him of the rules. “Don’t tell me. Then it won’t come true.”

“I thought that was only for birthday cakes.”

Charles rolled his eyes at him and looked back up at the sky, lit up brilliantly above the tops of the trees. “You’re ridiculous.”

Erik looked back up at the sky as well rather than retorting, took Charles’s hand in both of his so he could bring it up to his lips and kiss it. He caught the way Charles’s lips curved up further when he did even as he was already pointing out another shape in the stars for Erik’s appraisal.

Erik was glad in some ways that Charles didn’t want him to tell. He wouldn’t have known what to say. It was hard to think of something to wish for when you already had the world.


End file.
